Saint Augustine

Augustine was born in the city of Thagaste, in what is now Souk Ahras, Algeria, to a Roman father and a Berber mother. He is arguably the most important writer and theologian in Western Christianity. Classified as a saint and a Doctor of the Church by the Roman Catholic Church, he is influential for much of Protestantism as well. Augustine was enrolled as a catechumen as a child but grew up studying rhetoric and philosophy, and he remained uncommitted to religion. As a young man, he spent about a decade following the Manichean movement. Career success took him from Carthage to Rome and then to Milan, where he took a position as professor of rhetoric. In Milan, Augustine became disillusioned with Manicheism and drawn to the preaching of Ambrose, the city’s bishop. Following the long inner struggle detailed in Confessions, Augustine became a Christian and got baptized in his early 30s. After his mother’s death he moved back to Africa where, on a visit to the port of Hippo Regius, he was pressured into being ordained as a priest. By 395, he was consecrated bishop. His prodigious theological writings encompassed not just autobiography, sermons, and biblical commentary, but careful articulations of Christian doctrines such as the Trinity, the nature of the Church, and the role of God’s grace in salvation, often in response to dissident preachers and sects that arose in his lifetime. Augustine never married, but he was strongly attached to an unnamed concubine for many years before his conversion, and she bore him a son named Adeodatus. He died during a Vandal siege of Hippo on August 28, 430.