01 — Foundations
The world into which Augustine was born and the years in which he sought his way to it: the late-Roman African Church of the fourth century, a Latin Christianity rich, fractious, and shadowed by the Manichaean and Donatist movements; and the restless early life — Thagaste and Carthage, the long influence of his mother Monica, the years of Manichaeism and skeptical searching — that the Confessions would later read as a providence drawing him home.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; “Blessed Augustine”)
Augustine did not arrive at the catholic faith from nowhere. He was a son of Roman Africa, the most Latin and one of the most theologically combative provinces of the Western Church, and his formation passed through its rhetoric schools, its Manichaean conventicles, and the long patience of a Christian mother. This section sets that context: first the African Church itself — its Latinity, its martyr-cult and rigorist temper, its Donatist schism and its Manichaean rivals — and then the inner itinerary of the young Augustine from Thagaste through Carthage to the threshold of Milan, the “restless heart” of the Confessions’ famous opening.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Late-Roman African Church | Fourth-century Roman North Africa; the Latin Christianity of Tertullian and Cyprian; the martyr-cult and rigorist temper; the Donatist schism that split the province; and Manichaeism, the dualist religion that captured the young Augustine. |
| The Restless Heart | Thagaste, the rhetoric schools of Madauros and Carthage; Monica and Patricius; the reading of Cicero’s Hortensius; the nine years as a Manichaean “hearer”; the move to Rome and Milan; the searching that the Confessions reads as providence. |
See Also
- The Garden at Milan — the term of the searching this section begins
- Against the Donatists — the African schism Augustine would later confront as bishop
- Against the Manichees — the religion he left, and later refuted
- The Pre-Schism Church — the undivided Church of Augustine’s century
- The Church Fathers — Augustine among the Latin Fathers
References
- Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. New ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
- Chadwick, Henry. Augustine: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
- Frend, W. H. C. The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952.
- Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.