SAINT AUGUSTINE: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

1. Aurelius Augustine of Hippo (Tagaste, November 13, 354 – Hippo, August 28, 430), was a Christian pastor, theologian and philosopher. He was bishop of Hippo, and fought against the Manicheans, the Donatists and the Pelagians. He was a great thinker of Christianity in the first millennium and one of the greatest minds of humanity. Father of the Latin Church and, on September 20, 1295, Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed him Doctor of the Church.
2. Augustine was born on November 13, 354 in Tagaste, Souk Ahras in present-day Algeria, then the Roman province of Numidia. He was probably born into a heavily Romanized Berber family. His father, Patricius, was a small pagan landowner and his mother, Saint Monica, a Christian woman, a self-sacrificing mother who was always concerned about her son, Augustine. Monica taught her son the basic principles of Christianity and, seeing how the young Augustine was separating himself from Christianity, she devoted herself to constant prayer for him, amid great suffering. 
3. In Tagaste, Augustine began his basic studies, and it seems that his father sent him to Madaura to study grammar. Augustine excelled in the study of letters. He showed a great interest in literature, especially classical Greek, and possessed great eloquence. In Madaura and Carthage he specialized in grammar and rhetoric. In Carthage, he became interested in the theatre, displayed his rhetorical genius and excelled in poetic competitions and public literary contests. 
4. In the midst of a hectic sexual life, he devoted himself, with great profit, to philosophy. At the age of nineteen, reading Cicero’s ‘Hortensius’ awakened in Augustine the spirit of research and he devoted himself fully to philosophy. He excelled in it.  During this time the young Augustine met a woman with whom he maintained a stable relationship for fourteen years and with whom he had his son: Adeodatus. 
5. In his tireless search for the truth, Augustine passed from one philosophical school to another without finding in any of them a true answer to his concerns. Finally he embraced Manichaeism, believing that in this system he would find a model according to which he could orient his life. He followed this doctrine for several years and finally, disappointed, abandoned it, considering it to be a simplistic doctrine that, seriously dualistic, supported the passivity of good in the face of evil.
6. Immersed in great personal frustration, he decided, in 383, to leave for Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire. Augustine’s departure for Rome was motivated by an intellectual desire and the desire to discover new horizons. His mother wanted to accompany him, but Augustine deceived her and left her behind. In Rome he became seriously ill. After recovering, and thanks to his friend and protector Symmachus, prefect of Rome, he was named “magister rhetoricae” in Milan. Augustine, a Manichean and imperial orator in Milan, was the rival in oratory of Bishop Ambrose.
7. In Milan, he began to attend the exhortations of Bishop Ambrose as a catechumen, being amazed by his preaching and his love for the poorest. Ambrose introduced him to the writings of Plotinus and the epistles of Paul of Tarsus. Augustine converted to Christianity and decided to break definitively with Manichaeism.
8. This news filled his mother with joy. She had travelled to Italy to be with her son, and she took it upon herself to find him a marriage that suited his social status and direct him towards baptism. Instead of marrying the woman Monica had found for him, he decided to live in asceticism, a decision he reached after having become acquainted with the Neoplatonic writings thanks to the priest Simplician and through the influence of the philosopher Mario Victorino. 
9. Bishop Ambrose offered him the key to interpret the Old Testament and find the source of faith in the Bible. Reading the texts of Saint Paul helped Augustine to solve the problem of the universal mediation of Jesus Christ, linked to that of the Communion of Saints and that of divine Grace. While Augustine was in the garden with his friend Alipio, he heard the voice of a child saying: “Tolle lege: take and read.” He understood that it was a divine invitation. He took the Bible, opened it to the letters of St. Paul and read the passage: “No revelling and drunkenness, no lusts and debauchery, no strife and envy. Instead, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about the flesh to gratify your desires” (Rom 13:13-14). When he reached the end of this sentence, all shadows of doubt vanished. 
10. In 385, Augustine converted to Christianity. In 386, he devoted himself to the formal and methodical study of Christian ideas. He resigned from his chair and retired with his mother and some companions to Cassiciacum, near Milan, to devote himself entirely to study and meditation. On April 24, 387, at the age of thirty-three, he was baptized in Milan by Bishop Ambrose. After being baptized, he returned to Africa, but before he could embark, his mother Monica died at Ostia, the port near Rome.
11. When he arrived at Tagaste, Augustine sold all his possessions and distributed the proceeds among the poor. He retired with some companions to live on a small property and there led a monastic life. Years later, this experience was the inspiration for his famous Rule. Despite his search for solitude and isolation, Augustine’s fame spread throughout the country. In 391 he traveled to Hippo (Hippo Regius, modern Annaba, in Algeria) to look for a possible candidate for monastic life, but during a liturgical celebration he was chosen by the community to be ordained a priest, because of the needs of Bishop Valerius of Hippo. Augustine accepted this choice, after resisting, although with tears in his eyes. Something similar happened when he was consecrated bishop in 395. He then left the monastery of laymen and settled in the episcopal house, which he transformed into a monastery of clerics. In this, Augustine was the father and teacher of the regular communal life of the clergy.
12. Augustine’s episcopal activity was enormous and varied. He preached and wrote, he polemized with those who went against the orthodoxy of Christian doctrine, he attended councils and resolved the most diverse problems presented to him by his faithful. He confronted Manicheans, Donatists, Arians, Pelagians, Priscillianists, academics, etc. He participated in the regional councils of Hippo in 393, Carthage in 397 and Carthage in 419, in the last two as president and in which the biblical canon that had been established by Pope Damasus I in Rome at the Synod of 382 was definitively sanctioned.
13. As a bishop, he wrote books that position him as one of the main Fathers of the Latin Church. Augustine’s life was a clear example for the Christian Church of the change that was achieved with the adoption of a set of fundamental and basic Christian beliefs and values.
14. Augustine died in Hippo on August 28, 430 during the siege to which the vandals of Genseric subjected the city in the context of the invasion of that Roman province of Africa. His body was transferred to Sardinia at an uncertain date and, around 725, to Pavia, to the Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, where it rests today.

Jaume González-Agàpito