Augustine

North African Roman philosopher, theologian and bishop (354–430), born in Thagaste, in present-day Algeria, son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Monica, who exerted a decisive influence on his later conversion. Trained in rhetoric at Carthage and active as a teacher in Rome and Milan, he traversed in his youth and early maturity a long spiritual and intellectual journey — nine years of adherence to Manichaeism, a phase of academic scepticism, and a period of Neoplatonic influence, particularly from Plotinus — narrated with unprecedented psychological introspection in the Confessions (397–400), regarded as the first great spiritual autobiography of the Western tradition and one of the foundational texts of introspective literature. His conversion to Christianity in 386, in Milan, under the influence of Saint Ambrose, led him to be ordained a priest and, in 395, bishop of Hippo, an office he held until his death while the city lay under siege by the Vandals. His theological and philosophical work, of overwhelming scope and influence, includes The City of God (413–426), written in response to the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 to refute the charge that abandoning the pagan gods had caused the city's fall, and which develops a Christian philosophy of history centred on the distinction between the earthly city, governed by self-love to the contempt of God, and the heavenly city, governed by love of God to the contempt of self. In his controversy with the monk Pelagius, Augustine developed his doctrine of original sin and the absolute necessity of divine grace for salvation, denying that fallen human will can, by itself, do good without God's freely given aid — a doctrine that would decisively influence both medieval Catholicism and, much later, the Protestant Reformation, particularly Luther and Calvin. Regarded as the father of Western theology and one of the four great Doctors of the Latin Church, Augustine is also, thanks to his introspective analysis of time, memory and will, a pivotal figure in the history of philosophy, in many respects a forerunner of phenomenology and modern psychology of interiority.

11 works

• Anti-Pelagian Writings (NPNF I/V)
• Confessions
• Confessions (la)
• Doctrinal and Moral Treatises (NPNF I/III: Enchiridion, On the Catechising, On Faith and the Creed, On Continence, On Lying, etc.)
• Expositions on the Book of Psalms (NPNF I/VIII)
• Homilies on the Gospel of John; Homilies on the First Epistle of John; Soliloquies (NPNF I/VII)
• On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana)
• On the Trinity (De Trinitate)
• The City of God, Volume I
• The City of God, Volume II
• Writings Against the Manichaeans and Against the Donatists (NPNF I/IV)