When Augustine lay dying in August of 430, Vandal armies were besieging the African city of Hippo

(modern Annaba, Algeria), where Augustine was the spiritual leader of a vibrant community of Christians
living under the rule of the Roman Empire. Within weeks, Hippo would fall; the great city of Rome itself
would be captured within thirty years. Born into the culture of antiquity but laying the foundations for
the medieval millennium that was just about to begin, Augustine stands with one foot in each world. His
monumental autobiography, the Confessions, constantly draws on the rich literature of the Roman
orators and prose writers, especially Cicero. Yet it also reaches forward, innovatively exploring the ways
in which the reader—like Augustine himself—might find that the Word of God has all along been lodged
within his innermost soul.

LIFE AND TIMES

Augustine was a native of the northern African regions that were part of the Roman Empire. Yet the
empire was in a gradual state of collapse throughout Augustine’s lifetime: strong military leaders were
running the government in all but name from 395 onward, and the final Roman emperor would be
deposed by rebellious mercenary troops in 476. It was a transitional period—a time of great instability
and, simultaneously, cultural and religious ferment. Mystery and cult religions were particularly popular,
as witnessed by Augustine's account of his years with the Manichaeans; Apuleius also captures this
milieu in his description of the devotees of Isis in The Golden Ass. Despite the instability and uncertainty
of the period, the administrative and economic structures of the empire were still healthy enough to
ease travel between its various parts, allowing Augustine to journey throughout northern Africa and
Italy. Augustine spent his early years in Africa, where there were several provincial cities of substantial
size. Born at Thagaste (modern Souk-Ahras, Algeria), he had his first schooling at the nearby town of
Madaurus and, later, at the sophisticated cultural capital of Carthage. There, Augustine became intrigued
by Manichaeanism, a dualistic religion that resembled early Christianity in emphasizing the life of the
mind and the drive toward increasing spiritual purity, though the two religions differed very significantly
in their views of the nature of God. Augustine quickly rose to the top of his profession as an educator
and public speaker, teaching grammar at his birthplace of Thagaste and, later, rhetoric at Carthage.
These provincial successes impelled him to Rome, where he established a school of rhetoric; he was then
invited to come to Milan, which had become a capital of the Western Roman Empire, to take on the chair
of rhetoric and such duties as writing honorific speeches to be presented at court. At Milan, Augustine
entered into a very sophisticated intellectual community, where he became deeply involved in
Neoplatonism both as a philosophy and as a quasi-religious form of mysticism. He also came to know
Ambrose, the Roman Catholic bishop of Milan. At the time, Augustine says, he told himself that he was
attending Ambrose’s sermons simply to judge his excellence as a public speaker. In fact, Augustine was
becoming increasingly drawn to Christianity, a religion to which his mother, Monica, had vainly tried to
introduce him since he was a young child. The bond between Augustine and Ambrose was strengthened
enormously by Monica, who had followed her son to Milan and become close to Ambrose; the bishop
reciprocated, constantly telling his friend Augustine what a treasure he had in his faithful and devout
mother. The Confessions shows that Monica played a major role in her son’s spiritual growth, which
culminated in Augustine’s conversion and baptism on Easter 386, at the age of thirty-two. This was a
moment of complete change for Augustine, not just spiritually but also practically: he gave up his chair in
rhetoric at the imperial court of Milan, withdrew from his engagement to marry, and went with his
mother to the port of Ostia to return to Africa. But before they could sail from Italy, Monica died, as did
Augustine's son, Adeodatus, who had been born in Carthage to Augustine's longtime mistress, traveled
to Italy with Augustine, and undergone baptism alongside his father. Alone back in Thagaste, Augustine
surrounded himself with spiritual brothers—members of — the Christian community in the region—and
transformed his family home into a monastery. When he paid a visit to a friend at Hippo in 391,
Augustine found that his reputation as a spiritual leader had preceded him. The community at Hippo
growing begged Augustine to remain with them, and he was ordained a priest at their request. By 396,
he was bishop of Hippo, a position he held until his death.

WORK

Augustine probably began work on the Confessions in 397, when he was fortythree years old. He seems
to have been suffering from a terrible case of writer's block, with several half-finished pieces of work on
hand. The experience of writing the Confessions apparently cured it, for almost immediately after
completing it Augustine went on to produce an extraordinarily large number of works. The Confessions
is, as the name suggests, autobiographical, the story of one man’s life in his own words. But it is also
confessional in the sense of being a full account of one’s sins; a story addressed first of all to God, the
hearer who is able to forgive the transgressions that Augustine recounts. At the same time, the
Confessions has a secondary addressee, as Augustine himself acknowledges: other would-be Christians
who might be able to trace the path of their own spiritual journey as a result of having read about the
struggles of another. Of the thirteen books of the Confessions, only the first nine are autobiographical,
covering the period from Augustine’s early childhood memories to his stay in Ostia in 387, as he waits for
the boat that would take him home. The autobiographical genre, almost without precedent in this
period, is perhaps Augustine’s greatest literary legacy. We hear nothing from Augustine about his later
years in Africa; instead, the final books of the Confessions are an analysis of the account of creation in
Genesis, along with a sustained meditation on the nature of time and memory. ‘The overall effect of the
Confessions is to turn the reader inward, away from the individual journey of Augustine and toward the
collective journey of humanity toward the divine. Surprisingly for a book dedicated to the relationship of
the soul to God, the most moving parts of the Confessions focus on Augustine's relationship to other
human beings—not just his mother, Monica, who was so instrumental to Augustine's conversion to
Christianity, but also his beloved son, Adeodatus, and the unnamed mistress who was Augustine’s
companion from age seventeen (when he first went to Carthage) until his mother persuaded him to
enter into an arranged marriage in 385, shortly before his conversion. This woman, whom Augustine
simply calls “the One,” faithfully followed him on his journeys, first to Rome and then to Milan. When
Augustine finally renounced his relationship with her, she returned to Africa, “vowing before you never
to know any other man.” All of these human relationships, however passionate, are in the end subsumed
within Augustine’s all-consuming relationship with God. He addresses God familiarly throughout the
Confessions, as if he were an intimate friend who knew all Augustine’s secrets, but who also had the
terrifying capacity to destroy, inspiring both adoration and fear. Augustine writes frankly about his self-
fashioning within the various communities to which he belonged, from his involvement in a gang of
undisciplined youths to his immersion in the Manichaean community at Carthage, his time among the
Neoplatonists in Milan, and his final place of rest among the Christian community at Hippo. His journey
is, at a deep level, a search for the self, which he comes to find only after long struggle, and only through
the companionship of others. Augustine comes home first spiritually, with a conversion inspired by the
supernatural voice of a child, and then physically, sailing from Ostia to Thagaste, where he will make a
new spiritual home filled with Christian believers among the bricks and mortar of his childhood house.
Desire and longing structure the narrative of the Confessions, from Augustine's heady days in Carthage,
at the theater by day and in the arms of his mistress by night, to his patient vigil at the port of Ostia,
consumed at once by sorrow for the death of Monica and joy in his discovery of Christ. Caught between
his love for human beings and his longing for the divine, Augustine is never more present to us than
when, shortly before his conversion, he cries out to God, “Grant me chastity and continance, only not
yet.”

BOOK 1: CHILDHOOD / Augustine's infancy and early childhood. He falls ill and is almost baptized; he is
sent to school to study Latin literature.

[6. 7] For what do I wish to say, Lord, except that | do not know from where I came into what I call this
dying life, or living death; I do not know. But the consolation of Your mercies uplifted me, as I heard
from the father and mother of my flesh, out of whom and in whom You formed me at the appropriate
time, for I do not remember it myself. | was embraced by the comforts of human milk, but neither my
mother nor my nurses filled their own breasts for me. It was You Who through them gave me the food
of my infancy according to Your ordinance and the riches spread throughout the essence of all things.
You also granted me to want no more than You gave, and granted that my nurses wanted to give me
what You had given them, for they sought to give me by divine ordination what they had received in
abundance from You. But the good that came to me from them was also good for them, though it did
not come from them but through them; for from You, O God, come all good things, and from my God
is my entire salvation.? This I learned only later, when, through all the inner and outer things You
bestow, you called to me; for then I only knew how to suckle, content in what was pleasurable and
crying at what offended my flesh, and nothing more.

[6. 8] Later I began to smile—first in sleep, then waking. At least that is what I was told about myself
and I believe it, for this is what we see in infants, though I do not remember it about myself. Gradually
I began to perceive where I was, and to want to express my needs to those who could fulfill them; but
I could not express them, for the needs were inside me, and the other people outside; nor were they
able with any of their senses to enter my soul. So I kicked and shouted; these were the few signs |
could make that resembled my wishes, though they did not really resemble them. And when I was not
obeyed, either because I was not understood or because what I wanted might harm me, I became
indignant with the adults for not submitting to me, indignant with those who were not my slaves for
not serving me, and avenged myself by crying.i That is how infants are, as I learned from those I have
been able to observe; the infants who knew nothing showing me better than my experienced nurses
that I too had been like that

[8. 13] On my way to the present I passed from infancy to boyhood. Or is it not that boyhood came to
me, succeeding infancy? Not that infancy departed, for where would it have gone? Yet suddenly it was
no more, for I was no longer an infant who could not talk but had become a boy speaking. This I
remember; but how I learned to speak I found out only later. I was not taught to speak by adults
presenting me with words in a certain fixed order, as they would do somewhat later with letters. But
with the mind that You gave me, my God, I myself learned through cries and all kinds of sounds and
motions of my limbs, to express the feelings of my heart so that my wishes would be fulfilled. But I
was not able to express everything | wanted to express to whomever I wanted. I managed to
remember whenever adults called a thing something; and when, along with their voice, they moved
their bodies toward a certain object | would see and retain the sounds with which they expressed the
object. Moreover, what they wanted to express was clear from their gestures, which are the natural
language of all races and are expressed in the face, the eyes, and movements of the limbs, and tones
of voice that indicate the state of a person’s mind as it strives toward, takes hold of, rejects, or shuns a
thing. In this way, by repeatedly hearing words as they were positioned in various sentences, I
gradually connected them with the things they signified, and so trained my mouth to express my
desires through these signs. In this way | communicated the signs of my desires to the people [ was
among, and so entered into the tempests of society; yet I was still dependent on the authority of my
parents and the will of the adults around me.