Life and times

Augustine was born on November 13, 354, to a family of hereditary curial rank, in Thagaste (modern Suq Ahras in Algeria) during the latter days of the western Roman Empire. Christianity was the official state religion, but other religions were still tolerated and practiced; Augustine seems to have received at least a nominal Christian upbringing. He was formally educated at Thagaste, Madaura, and Carthage to be a rhetorician, one of the few professions that allowed upward social mobility. Once his education was complete, Augustine taught rhetoric in Carthage and Rome, eventually securing the post of official rhetorician to the imperial city of Milan in 384 – the very year in which the Emperor Theodosius prohibited pagan worship and made Christianity the only religion of the Empire. While resident in Milan, Augustine attended the sermons of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, and became a catechumen in the Catholic Church. In the latter part of 386, Augustine chose to embrace Catholicism wholeheartedly (which he describes as a kind of “conversion”), and he subsequently resigned his post as rhetorician. To make ends meet he took on private students and began to write and publish dialogues and treatises. Augustine was formally baptized in a public ceremony by Ambrose himself on Holy Saturday, April 24, 387. Returning to Africa, he founded a religious community in Thagaste.