Early Life and Wandering
Augustine's family were Romanized, Latin-speaking Berbers of Thagaste. His mother Monica was a devout Christian and his father Patricius a pagan official whom Monica is traditionally said to have brought to baptism near the end of his life around 371; Augustine also had a brother, Navigius, and a sister, Perpetua. He was enrolled as a catechumen in infancy but not baptized.
Educated first at Madaurus and then at Carthage, he excelled in rhetoric and literary competition. By his own later account he lived hedonistically as a young man, and during his student years formed a relationship that produced his son Adeodatus around 372. The reading of Cicero's Hortensius turned his mind toward the pursuit of wisdom, but he sought it for some nine years in Manichaeism before growing disillusioned with that sect.
Conversion and Baptism
Augustine's teaching career took him from Thagaste and Carthage to Rome in 383 and to Milan in late 384. In Milan the preaching of Bishop Ambrose, together with the reading of the Neoplatonists and of Scripture, provoked a deep crisis in his soul.
In a garden in late August 386 he heard the words 'take up and read,' opened the Scriptures to Romans 13:13–14, and was decisively converted. Ambrose baptized him along with his son Adeodatus at the Easter Vigil of 387. After his mother Monica died, Augustine returned to North Africa, distributed his wealth to the poor, and took up the monastic life.
Priesthood and Episcopate
In 391 the people of Hippo Regius pressed Augustine, against his wishes, to be ordained a priest by their bishop Valerius. Around 395–396 he was made coadjutor bishop of Hippo with right of succession, and after Valerius's death he became full bishop, an office he held for roughly thirty-five years.
As bishop he maintained a monastic manner of life within his episcopal residence and drew up a rule for his community, which produced numerous bishops and monastic founders; for this he is sometimes called a patron of clergy who live under a rule. He was a tireless preacher: more than 350 of his sermons are believed to be authentic, many of them directed against the Manichaean teaching he had once held.
Writings and Controversies
Augustine was an extraordinarily prolific author; the OCA life numbers his works at roughly 1,030. They engaged the major controversies of his day, refuting the Manichaeans on the problem of evil, the Donatists on the nature of the Church, and the Pelagians on grace and human nature.
Among his best-known writings are the Confessions, The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, On the Trinity, the Enchiridion (or Handbook of Christian Knowledge), and works such as On Nature and Grace directed against Pelagian doctrine. He prized clarity for the sake of his hearers, remarking that it was better for them to fault his grammar than to fail to understand him.
Death and Legacy
Augustine died on 28 August 430, at about age seventy-five, during the Vandal siege of Hippo, which is reported to have lasted some eighteen months; according to the accounts he encouraged the city's resistance against the Arian Christianity of the Vandals.
His teaching shaped the Christian West profoundly. Within the Orthodox tradition his standing was affirmed in conciliar settings — the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) listed him among the Church Fathers, the Sixth Ecumenical Council called him 'the most excellent and blessed Augustine' and 'the most wise teacher,' and the Council of Constantinople of 1166 referred to him as 'Saint Augustine.'
Veneration in the Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church commemorates Blessed Augustine on June 15, while the Western churches keep his death date, August 28. He is to be distinguished from Augustine of Canterbury.
Orthodox assessments of him have varied: some regard him as a saint chiefly on the strength of his confessional and devotional writings rather than his speculative theology, while others have questioned particular points of his teaching — notably his Triadology, which is held to have influenced the later Filioque addition to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. No single conciliar position governs every aspect of this question. His works were largely unknown in the Greek East until they were translated around 1360 by Demetrios Cydones.
Relics & Shrines
Augustine's body was translated from North Africa to Cagliari in Sardinia, and around the year 720 to the church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro in Pavia, Italy, where his relics remain; portions are also reported in Greece.
In 1842 a portion of his right arm was returned to Annaba (ancient Hippo) in Algeria, where it is enshrined in the Basilica of Saint Augustine.
