Augustine was born in Tagaste (modern day Souk Ahras, Algeria) in 354. This land was under the rule of Rome since Carthage was conquered almost five hundred years before his birth. Tagaste was a small town without a college or university. His parents were Patricius and Monica, and belonged to the middle class. This meant that they were wealthy enough to hope to sent Augustine to get an education, but too poor to be able to afford the expenditure on their own. His mother was Christian, however, his father believed in the Roman gods. He accepted baptism only on his deathbed.
His childhood is somewhat of a mystery. All that anyone knows is what he wrote down in his memoirs. He depicts himself as an ordinary child that was smart, rational, and prone to jealousy. He was a child that held the respect of his elders very carefully. He studied and became fluent in Latin. His family, with the help of a wealthy family friend, scrapped together enough money to send him to the university in Madaura. At the age of seventeen Augustine moved Carthage and began to study. Carthage was the Rome of Northern Africa. It was an economic, cultural, and political center of Northern Africa. Shortly after Augustine’s transfer to Carthage, his father died.
Once in Carthage and done with his father’s funeral, Augustine moved in with a young woman, by whom a son would soon be born. Though he lives with this mysterious woman for the span of ten years, there is no mention of her name in his memoirs. He only wrote that when he had to give up this woman’s love for a political marriage in Milan “his heart ran blood”. His son, Adeodatus, stayed with his father until he died when he was fourteen or fifteen.
While Augustine was studying in Carthage, he discovered the works of Cicero. A work called Hortensius inspired Augustine to study philosophy. This would be his primary love until he converted to Christianity. This love of philosophy inspired him to join Manicheism, a rival religious cult to Christianity. Augustine soon became disappointed with the groups vague system of beliefs. However, though he separated himself from the sect privately, publicly he remained a supporter until 384, more than a decade after he joined the religious sect. At the age of twenty-one, after four years of study in Carthage, Augustine returned home to teach. This only lasted for a short while, as a year later he was again living in Carthage.
From this point onward, Augustine’s career explodes. Seven more years of study and philosophical discourse turned the hometown teacher into a formidable scholar and orator. In 383 or 384 Augustine moved to Rome, the center of civilization. Once there Augustine won a job as professor of rhetoric. Thus, by the age of thirty (384) Augustine had won the most visible academic position in the world. The job took him to Milan. Once he set up a stable life there, his widowed mother moved in with him. His mother talked him into giving up his mistress (the mother of Adeodatus) and marrying a presentable woman. She also began pressing the teachings of Christianity on him.
The stress of such a rapid rise in the public sphere was taking its toll on Augustine. He was tired, worn out, and perplexed by a number of questions that no one could answer for him. It was at this time that Augustine began to develop a relationship bishop Ambrose. He would listen to his sermons. Slowly Augustine, who had denounced Christianity as illogic rhetoric, began to see Christianity in a new favorable way. In 386, less than two years after moving to Milan, Augustine gave up his academic position on the grounds of ill health, and move to a villa in Cassiciacum. Here he and few friends discussed religion, philosophy, and prayer. On Easter night in 387 Ambrose baptized Augustine.
At the age of thirty-five, with his new ideas and prayer, Augustine moved back to his old home in Northern Africa. In 389 he settled in Tagaste with a few friends. There they prayed and spoke of religious things. Augustine enjoyed this part of his life very much. However, two years later he was talked into joining the priesthood. Augustine now devoted himself to the texts of scripture and became a world-renowned theologian. His first theological treatise came from this period. In it he attacks the Manichees, the religious group that he had previously been a member of. By 393 Augustine was being asked to make sermons. In 395 the bishop of Hippo died. Augustine assumed his responsibilities and became the priest of Hippo.
Augustine remained the priest of Hippo until he died thirty-four years later. While at this post, he judged over many disputes. His priestly career is a series of controversies. However, Augustine’s main focus was liturgy. Through his study of liturgy, Augustine hoped to win three distinct social battles. The first was an ecclesiastical struggle for the very life of his community. The second was the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Finally, was the theological quarrel over the essentials of faith and salvation. It was to these three questions that Augustine sought to answer in his writings and discussions.
By the year 430 Augustine had grown to be an old man. Rome had fallen in 410 to the Vandals, and they were pressing into Northern Africa where Augustine had retired. In 430 they were besieging the city of Hippo. Hippo eventually fell to the barbarians. Augustine had died a few days before the fall. Not long after the Vandals captured Carthage and established an Empire that would last for a century.
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