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29 - Augustine

from A - LITERARY GUIDE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Henry Chadwick
Edited by
Frances Young ,
Lewis Ayres  and
Andrew Louth
Assisted by
Augustine Casiday
Frances Young
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Lewis Ayres
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Andrew Louth
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Augustine Casiday
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Summary

Aurelius Augustinus was born on 13 November 354 at Thagaste (now Souk-Ahras) in the Roman province of Numidia, North Africa, son of a small time farmer, Particius, a pagan until near his deathbed, and his Christian wife Mon(n)ica. Gifted in his grasp of Latin literature (Cicero, Sallust, Virgil and Terence he came to know virtually by heart), he studied at nearby Madauros, then at Carthage. Aged seventeen, following the then almost universal custom, he took to his bed and board a Carthaginian girl of low social status, and by her begat a son, Adeodatus, who turned out to be clever but died in adolescence. To his memory Augustine dedicated a dialogue, De magistro (the Teacher) on non-verbal communication. Aged eighteen he was profoundly influenced by Cicero’s dialogue in defence of the study of philosophy, Hortensius, now extant only in fragmentary quotations; Cicero told him that philosophical study (of ethics) was indispensable to finding happiness, which was not achieved by power, honour, wealth or sex. At the time he was already sceptical about his mother’s orthodox Christianity, especially offended by the morals of the Israelite patriarchs and the contradictory genealogies of Jesus. But Cicero moved him towards religion; he opted for the sect of theosophists, who followed the third-century gnostic, Mani, the ‘Manichees’, to whom he remained attached for virtually a decade. Mani reasoned that if God is good and evil is not done away, the supreme power must be less than omnipotent. Augustine thought the argument forceful as an explanation of the problem of evil.

Keywords

NeoplatonismChristianityPelagiusanti-Manichee writingsAurelius Augustinesceptical epistemology
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The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature , pp. 328 - 341
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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