Childhood
Augustine was born in 354 at Thagaste (modern Souk-Ahras, Algeria), a small town in the Roman province of Numidia, in North Africa. His father, Patricius, was a minor Roman official, and, like many Roman citizens at that time, a nominal follower of traditional Roman pagan religion. Augustine's mother, Monica, was a devout Christian whose piety did not seem to have a great influence upon him until later in his life. Patricius, though not antagonistic to Monica's attempt to inculcate Christian faith in her children, apparently effected a greater influence through the force of moral neglect than Monica was able to through catechesis. Most of what we know of Augustine's early life comes from his own biographical work Confessions, obviously written to emphasize the profound transformation in his life and the divine sovereignty which brought about his conversion. He saw his mother's role as being the saintly (though not perfect) pillar of the family and his own formative moral exemplar, whereas his father's moral influence he considered at best nonexistent. It is therefore not surprising that Augustine devotes an entire section to Monica's life, but says little about his father.

Patricius and Monica, though not well off, were of sufficient means and inclination to provide a significant formal education for their son, first in Thagaste and then in the nearby university town of Madaura. The teenage Augustine excelled in Latin studies, but never liked Greek. His academic skills made possible further study in Carthage, the most prominent city in north Africa at that time.

Early Career Ambitions
At about age seventeen, Augustine experienced a series of events which would dramatically affect the course of his life. His move to Carthage brought him into company more educated but also more boisterous in lifestyle. Also at about this time, Augustine's father died, and ironically, this event seems to have affected Augustine rather little. Augustine's recollection of the death of his father is more noteworthy for the fact that his father was baptized and converted just before dying, which Augustine attributes to the faithful prayers and example of his mother, whose stature seemed to loom larger in memory than firsthand. Far more memorable for Augustine himself was his descent into so-called "unbridled dissoluteness" (Confessions, II. iii), when he apparently exercised his more lustful teenage inclinations. The facts of his life are somewhat ambivalent on this point, however. It is true that he took up with a young woman he met in Carthage and soon after fathered a child (whom he named Adeodatus -- "gift from God"), but he nevertheless cohabited with her for fifteen years, longer than one might expect someone in the throes of a fling to endure. Indeed, Augustine himself writes that although she was not his lawful wife and that he had found her in his "state of wandering desire and lack of prudence," nevertheless, "she was the only girl for me, and I was faithful to her." (Confessions, IV. ii). Nevertheless, the tone of his account indicates that Augustine's top priority in his younger years was self-gratification, be it pursued through advancement of his career or through sensual pleasure.

In Carthage, Augustine's career ambition began to develop. He was studying rhetoric, the popular field of study among upwardly mobile young Roman men, and was apparently particularly influenced by the work of Cicero. His increasing love of study and philosophy led him to travel to Rome for further study, where his skills and connections (which helped him gain an interview with Symmachus, the prefect of Rome) landed him a position as professor of rhetoric at the imperial court in Milan in 384. Now at the pinnacle of his career, he realized that he would have to make some personal changes in order to fit in at court. He put away his mistress and prepared to enter into a respectable marriage arranged by his mother, though he had to wait two years until his bride-to-be reached twelve years old (!), the age at which a Roman female could legally wed. During this time, he apparently took up with another woman. During his time in Milan, as previously, Augustine dwelled upon the disparity between his private life and the respectable public front he, like so many others around him, maintained.

The Search for Truth and Meaning
Although Monica, his mother, had tried to raise Augustine to be a Christian, enrolling him as a catechumen as a child, Augustine himself did not seem to have any natural interest or inclination in that direction. As a boy, he became gravely ill, whereupon his mother arranged for him to be baptized. When he recovered, though, his baptism was put off. Baptism was a rite popularly believed best administered at the point of death so that one might not thereafter fall from the state of grace into which he/she was baptized. For this reason, namely Monica's concern that Augustine's sins would be more grievous after his baptism than without it, the act went undone. This may have reinforced Augustine's early perception that Christianity need not be taken seriously as a source of moral guidance.

Nevertheless, as a young man, Augustine was thoughtful enough to ponder the disparity between his moral ideals, manifested superficially in the pleasantness of his public persona, and the sensual wickedness he harbored privately. Particularly troubling to him was the problem of the origin of evil. The Christian theology imparted to him as a catechumen he found unconvincing; compared to the beautiful and carefully crafted rhetorical texts he was accustomed to reading, he found the biblical text (especially the Old Testament) brutish and obtuse. Augustine took refuge in the answers provided by Manichaeism, a form of Eastern gnostic dualism based on the teachings of Mani, a Persian philosopher. Augustine still had reservations, though, and eagerly awaited an opportunity to have his remaining questions answered by Faustus, the Manichaean bishop, when Faustus visited Carthage in 382. Augustine met Faustus, and came away from the meeting profoundly disappointed by the lack of sophistication and coherence in Faustus' responses. This marked a turning point in Augustine's sentiments toward Manichaean philosophy.

Augustine moved to Rome in 383, and although he did not yet publicly break with his Manichaean contacts, his search for truth compelled him to continue to look for a suitable philosophical system. He investigated the skepticism of Plato's Academy, but it was his study of Plotinus, the famous third century philosopher, that brought him to neoplatonism, which captured his imagination, leading him to look for truth and ultimate meaning beyond the confines of his senses and the material world. The impact of neoplatonic philosophy can be seen in his later theological writings, which wed Christian theology to neoplatonic philosophy.

Crisis of Faith
Finding Rome an inhospitable environment, Augustine took the teaching appointment in Milan in 384. Partly to maintain appearances, and partly to appease his mother Monica, he began attending church services, where he sat under the preaching of Ambrose, the learned and eloquent bishop of Milan. In Ambrose, Augustine found a person of remarkable rhetorical skill. It was Ambrose's preaching skill that initially caught Augustine's attention. Soon, though, Augustine felt convinced by the force of Ambrose's arguments. Intellectually convinced of the truth of Christianity, he was nevertheless pulled by his sensual impulses, leading him to compose what is perhaps his best known epithet: "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." (Confessions, VIII. vii.)

Friends told Augustine heard the stories of the conversions of Victorinus, a well-known neoplatonic rhetorician, and of St. Anthony, but hearing these accounts compounded his trauma. Augustine longed to follow their examples, but felt powerless to do so. One day, he went out to the garden of the place he was staying to reflect and try to come to grips with the struggle within him. He heard what he thought sounded like a child's voice chanting the phrase "take up and read" over and over. Augustine took this as a divine oracle and immediately found the copy of the scriptures nearby, opened it, and read the first verses he saw, which were "let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (Romans 13:13-14 RSV) Augustine was baptized by Ambrose soon after, in the spring of 387.

A New Beginning
Augustine's conversion to Christianity was not merely superficial. He resolved to live a life of quiet retirement and celibacy back home in Africa. They left Italy for his hometown of Thagaste in 388, but not before both Monica, his mother, and Adeodatus, his son, died. Augustine reached Thagaste the following year.

Although he tried to keep a low profile, his reputation and news of his conversion and residence in Africa seem to have spread. Two years later, Augustine visited Hippo (also know as Hippo Regius), where Augustine was all but forcibly ordained into the priesthood by the adoring local congregation. Augustine begged Valerius, the bishop of Hippo, for time to prepare for ministry, but by 393 was preaching in Valerius' place. When the elderly bishop died in 395, Augustine succeeded him and held the post until his death in 430. His theological and homiletical output over those thirty-four years were enormous, and the fact that much of it survives to this day is a testament to Augustine's influence.

Writing Amid a Crumbling Empire
Romans who had fled to North Africa in the wake of the attacks of the Alaric and his troops (who in 410 had sacked Rome), brought a flickering of paganism with them. Augustine had a two-fold task: one, to care pastorally for the displaced Romans; and second, to refute their charge that Christianity was ultimately the cause of their displacement.