His Environment
The Place
Augustine was born in the
town of Tagaste in the Roman Province of Numidia in North Africa in the year
354. At that time Rome's influence stretched along the coastline of present day
Algeria and Tunisia, extending inland with diminishing power to the borders of
the Sahara desert. These coastal regions were a fertile land, producing great
crops of grain and vegetables in the river valleys and huge forests or olive
trees on the hillsides and arid high plains.
The town of Tagaste (the
present Souk-Ahras in Algeria) was situated in the north-east highlands of
Numidia, some sixty miles from Hippo Regius (the present Annaba [Bone]) the
sea-side city where Augustine was to spend the last 40 years of his life. It was
about 15 miles from Madaura (the present M'Daourouch, Algeria) where he went to
"prep" school and about 150 miles from Carthage on the coast of present day
Tunisia, where he was to go for higher education and where he was to spend the
early years of his teaching career. Carthage was the grand metropolis of the
land, founded by the Phoenicians nine centuries before the coming of Christ,
destroyed by Rome in 146 BC, reestablished by the Emperor Augustus in 29 BC, it
had become in Augustine's day the second largest city in the Western Empire.
Only Rome itself was larger.
Tagaste had no such
pretensions to grandeur. Though it had already existed for 300 years before
Augustine was born (and was to last even till today), it was nothing more than
somewhat pleasant county-seat for farms and great estates. It is likely that its
population was never more than a few thousand people, if that. It was situated
in the river valley of the Medjerda, a fertile land filled with corn and
pastures and gardens. The hills (where they were not cultivated with olive
trees) were heavily forested with oak and pine and in these natural habitats
lived lions and bears and panthers, animals frequently captured to be sold for
the Roman amphitheater games. Wild-flowers were sprinkled through the open
ground and flocks of various birds coursed through the clear skies. It was a
land of four seasons with a climate not unlike southern Spain. The winters were
short, of course, but snow was not unknown. The summers were long and very hot.
In sum it was a land full of life, pungent smells, and vibrant colors. It is no
wonder that Augustine's writings are filled with analogies from the land and
that he so often speaks about the beauty of this world. He grew up and lived
most of his life in a bountiful and vibrant land.
The People
This vitality was reflected
in the people of the land. The native North African was Berber and these were
still the dominant population in the rural areas (e.g. Tagaste) in the fourth
century. Added to these roots was that of the Phoenicians who had founded
Carthage nine centuries before the coming of Christ. There was also some Roman
blood intermixed, coming from the army veterans who had been given land as a
reward for their services some two hundred years before. Roman settlement had
ceased when Augustine was born, though many of the great estates were owned by
absentee Roman landlords. The flow of immigrants would increase later on as the
barbarians swept down on Rome in the early fifth century.
The people had a taste for
wine, women, and song. They were sociable and gregarious but given to violent
anger when they felt abused. Augustine in 420 gave the following sympathetic
description of the typical North African Christian who was serious about
salvation. He was like a husband who did good works from time to time, who was
faithful to his wife and enjoyed having sex with her, who was very serious about
his honor and who thought seriously about taking revenge on anyone who sullied
that honor. He valued his property without being especially greedy or grasping.
He would give some of his goods to those in need but would fight vigorously
anyone who dared to steal from him. He did not pretend to be a saint nor did he
think he was God. He was ready to admit his failings and in all humility
recognized that without the grace of God they were likely to occur again.
The society was
characterized by defined social strata. At the very top were the landowners,
high government officials, and rich expatriates from Italy. The landowners lived
like feudal kings supported by the annual fees paid by tenant farmers for the
use of the land. Many of them were absentee landlords, taking little interest in
the products or the people that provided their income. At the second level were
minor bureaucrats, merchants, lawyers, and teachers. If the great estate owners
were the noble rich, these were the noble poor. They were noble in that they
lived by their wits more than by their sweat, but they were poor because any
extra funds from gainful employment were quickly absorbed by high taxes. The
problems that this middle class had in "making ends meet" is exemplified in the
difficulty Patritius had in keeping his son in school much beyond the elementary
level. It was only through the kindness of the wealthy Romanianus that Augustine
was able to continue his education and career in Carthage.
At the third level in
society were the peasants, poor fishermen, and day-laborers of the city. These
lived a hard life, glad on any given day to find a warm bed and adequate food.
Their only equity was their physical strength and when this ran out they faced
disaster. It was not unknown for them to sell their children into slavery so
that both they and the children could get enough to live. Sometimes they turned
to crime, attacking any person foolish enough to travel far from the towns
without military escort. People of the land, they had a healthy suspicion of any
alien people or alien ideas that threatened their historic culture. The peasants
owned little but themselves. The very lowest class in society, the slaves, owned
not even that. Still, from a material point of view their lot was sometimes
better than that of the poor freeman. If their master was kind, they could at
least be sure of daily meals and evening shelter. In truth they were not free,
but at least their owner was a human being who could just possibly take pity on
them. The peasant was chained by a harsher master ... an economic condition
which could not feel pity or any other emotion and which destroyed the very
possibility of a truly human, secure, comfortable existence.
The Politics
When Augustine was born in
the middle of the fourth century, the western Roman Empire was still a force to
be reckoned with. Though rebellion of border tribes in Northern Europe were a
continuing aggravation, Rome could still claim control over most of the
civilized world in Europe and North Africa. When Augustine died seventy-six
years later, all this had changed. The western Empire was under siege from the
barbarians from the north. They had invaded France and Spain. In 410 they
captured the city of Rome itself. They moved on into North Africa and by 430
were laying siege to Hippo where Augustine lay dying. They were to rule in North
Africa for a hundred years thereafter.
During most of Augustine's
life, Rome held uneasy control of its North African Provinces. Its influence was
quite strong in the cities and larger towns, but lost its vigor the further one
moved out into the country. There the native North African people held sway,
suspicious of any foreign challenge to their historic practices and filled with
hatred for the "aliens" from across the sea who took their crops and imposed
impossible levies on their possessions. Symptomatic of the power of this native
spirit was the success of Donatism, a vigorous faction within North African
Christianity. Part of its strength, it would seem, came from its identification
as a "North African" thing ... an ultra-conservative interpretation of salvation
doctrine that struck a resonant chord in the rigid native mind.
The life of Augustine thus
spanned a tumultuous time in the history of the western Empire and the western
Church. In the late fourth century it seemed that the North African Church would
be torn apart by religious civil war. In the early fifth century it seemed
possible that western civilization itself would come to an end. It is no wonder
that in 398 Augustine would observe to a friend that on every border and in
every province peace depended on the sworn oaths of barbarians. (Letter 47,
2) As he lay dying listening to the Vandals attacking his beloved Hippo, he
looked back over the violence of his times and ruefully observed that one could
not be called particularly wise if they were overcome with amazement when things
of wood and stone fell apart and people who are mortal eventually died.
(Possidius, Life of the Bishop Saint Augustine, 28)
The Religious Environment
The North African people
were greatly attracted by mystery. The world of the unseen was just as real to
them as the world of the seen. Few if any had a problem with whether God (or
gods) existed. The only question was what the divine was like. Daily life was a
continuing ritual aimed at placating and worshipping innumerable unseen spirits.
Magic to control the present and astrology to learn the future were accepted
tools for protecting one's existence. It is no great wonder that mystery cults
such as Manichaeism found a fertile field among the North Africans. There was
special veneration of the dead, a veneration which in Christian times was
converted to a deep reverence for those who had died for the faith. The border
between the living and the dead was very thin and in the perilous times of the
4th and 5th century it was a line that was easily crossed. At the same time
there was a pessimism about what one could do to make life better. Fate and
chance ultimately ruled one's life.
When Augustine was born
Christianity was a major force in the Roman Provinces of North Africa. Yet there
still remained a healthy residue of the native mystery cults as well as the
pagan rites imported with Rome. Christianity had appeared in North Africa by the
second century. It had survived the persecutions of the third century and had
produced such giants as Tertullian and Cyprian. By the time of Augustine
Christianity was the approved religion of the Empire, but in North Africa it was
split into two factions: the Roman Catholic and the Donatist. The Donatist
faction represented a conservative, rigorist element in Christianity. They
claimed to be the only "pure" Christianity since none of their group came from
the despised "Traitors" who had denied their faith in the midst of the
persecutions. They followed the Cyprian principle that there can be no salvation
outside the Church and the Church was for those who remained faithful after
Baptism. Augustine, who was of the liberal faction, was to spend much of his
early years as a Bishop in battle with the Donatists, ultimately winning the day
by getting their position rejected by the Pope and proscribed by the Emperor.
In dealing with his own
congregation over forty years Augustine had to take into account their passion
for the mysterious and their tendency towards fatalism. He spoke frequently
against such practices as Astrology and Magic. He preached Divine Providence,
rather than fate and chance, as the ruling force in life. He complained about
their superstitious worship of the martyrs and their tendency to use the feast
days as an excuse for debauchery. He attempted to center their enthusiasm on
Christ and to channel their passionate nature into a warm and enduring love for
God and all humans, even enemies. In this he was not completely successful, on
one occasion having to remonstrate them for participating in the lynching of an
unpopular public official. (Cf. Sermon 302) He could not change the
hard conditions of their life nor their passionate nature nor their exuberant
taste for life. But he did have some success in calling on their generosity to
help the poor, in substituting hope in providence for fear of fate, and in
encouraging them not to stop loving but only to love in some sort of orderly
fashion
His Life
Augustine was born in 354,
the third child of Monica and Patritius. He had an older brother, Navigius, and
at least one sister. Monica his mother was almost certainly a Berber and his
father was probably a mixture of Berber and Roman ancestry. Monica was a fervent
Catholic Christian while Patritius remained a good-natured pagan for most of his
life, perfectly willing to let Monica take care of the religious training of the
children. From her Augustine learned about Christianity as a child. He was,
however, never baptized. This was in accord with the normal practice of the day
of putting off Baptism until the adolescent days of sowing wild oats were over.
There is some indication that Augustine was still intermittently going to
Christian exercises in his late teens, but it seems clear that he was far from
serious about any religion in those days, consumed more by ambition and bodily
desires.
Augustine grew up in middle
class surroundings. Patritius had a small family estate and worked as a minor
government bureaucrat, a position of some respect but little income. He was able
to provide the necessities of life for his family but he had trouble providing
funds for the education of the children. It would seem that Augustine was the
only one provided with much of a formal education. Patritius and Monica shared a
common dream that their precocious child would bring honor to the family by
being successful in some noble career.
The child gave promise of
such success. He was very bright and ambitious and headstrong. As a child he
wanted to have his own way and cried loudly when he did not get it. He did well
at his studies but did not like school all that much. He had an insatiable
desire to know things but he also liked to play ball and to go to shows and for
these last ventures he was beaten often. He did not seem to relish being a
child. When he was in his 40's he was able to look back and thank God for the
good things he experienced in his growing up (Confessions, 1.20) but he
also ruefully observed that any sensible person, given the choice between doing
it over again or dying, would surely choose death. (City of God, 21.14)
Since the boy Augustine had
strong Berber roots, he may have been of swarthy complexion (although O'Meara is
of the opinion that it is unlikely that he was any darker than the average Roman
of the day). We do know from his physical remains that he was not very tall. He
seems that he was somewhat physically frail. A stomach ailment almost killed him
when he was a boy and a terrible fever (perhaps malaria) brought him close to
death again when he was in his 20's. He did survive for 76 years but throughout
his life he was plagued with asthma, a bad stomach, insomnia, and recurrent
fevers. His weak lungs were a factor in his decision to give up teaching when he
was still a young man (though this did not stop him from preaching at length
without benefit of microphone for forty years in his cathedral church at Hippo).
When he was 56 exhaustion did force him to take time off in the country, but he
continued with his preaching and teaching and writing thereafter till shortly
before his death 20 years later.
Perhaps because of his
ailments, Augustine did not have much faith in the medicine of his day. (Cf.
Commentary on Psalm 102, 5) Little wonder that he had so much to say about
facing up to death. Its possibility was his constant companion, especially as he
grew older.
Still, his sometime physical
disability did not lessen the vigor of his mind. The young Augustine quickly
outgrew the schools in Tagaste and, with the financial support of a family
friend (Romanianus), he was shipped off to the neighboring town of Madauros to
study grammar and literature. He was in his early teen's, away from home for the
first time, and he went a little crazy. He lied to his teachers, stole small
things to bribe his way into classmate games, and then cheated and quarreled so
that he could win. For all of that he learned easily and was pronounced "a boy
of great promise." (Cf. Confessions, 1.19 & 16)
When he was sixteen the
money for his education ran out and he was forced to spend a year at home in
idleness while his father tried to scrape together the funds to send him on to
higher studies in Carthage. Neither his father nor his mother seemed terribly
upset by his adolescent frivolity during the idle year. Patritius saw it as a
sign of his son's growing "macho" manhood and Monica hoped that it was a way of
"getting evil vapors out of his system." She did warn him about any actions
(e.g. fornication and adultery) that might jeopardize his future, but there is
some hint that he listened politely and then did what he wanted to do. Certainly
he traveled with a bad crowd. Augustine admits that he was not the worst of them
but he pretended to be the worst by boasting lies about fictional exploits. (Confessions,
2.3) All in all it was a bad year. Augustine wasted his time, Patritius worked
overtime, and Monica worried each day about the possible disasters that could
destroy her son. The whole family sighed with relief when the funds were
accumulated to send Augustine off to Carthage for his "higher education."
At Carthage the seventeen
year old Augustine continued his education and his wild behavior. He came in
contact with another gang of rowdies (the "Wreckers") dedicated to disrupting
classrooms and making life unpleasant for new students. Though Augustine did not
approve nor participate in all of the gang's activities, he did value their
friendship and lived with them. (Confessions, 3.3) He made good
progress in his studies while indulging his passion as much as he could. He
describes himself at this time in his life as being
... in love with loving and
it was even more delicious when I was able to enjoy the flesh of my love.
Confession, 3.1
He did carry on the pretense
of religion by going to church sometimes but (as he suggests) his main reason
for going was to see girls. (Cf. Confessions, 3.3) He was in fact
leading a double life, trying to act in a refined and sophisticated manner while
being driven by his physical passions. (Confessions, 3.1) In this
pretense he was eminently successful. He was perceived as a young man guaranteed
a fine future in public service as long as he did not make some terrible
mistake.
It seemed to those around
him that he made such a mistake when he fell in love. There is no record of the
woman's name but apparently she was the daughter of a freed slave. Formal
marriage would thus have been an obstacle to Augustine's career plans, but
Augustine apparently truly loved her. He lived with her for eleven years (an
extraordinary commitment for those days) and by her had a son, Adeodatus. This
ended his leisurely academic life. Now he had to find work to support his family
while still pursuing his studies. He was nineteen.
It was about this time that
the direction of his academic interests changed. While still pursuing his career
in rhetoric, he now (through the influence of Cicero's book Hortensius)
became excited about philosophy and its claim to wisdom. From being a
manipulator of words he now dreamed of understanding reality. At first he turned
to the Bible for answers but found that the stories and language that had so
entranced him as a child at the knee of Monica seemed crude and unsophisticated
now that he was a student of literature. Like many of his compatriots among the
intelligentsia of Carthage he turned to Manichaeism, that mysterious cult from
the East that promised both an easy explanation for the wild passions of humans
and the phenomena of nature. Augustine was to remain connected with this sect
for nine years, at the very end attached more by its political advantage than by
any deep-seated conviction.
In 375 Augustine was forced
to leave Carthage and return to Tagaste to find work. He was by this time a
truly dedicated and proselytizing Manichaean and Monica initially refused to
have anything to do with him. Eventually she relented, but Augustine was not
destined to stay long in Tagaste under any circumstances. A friend of his died
and so overcome was he with grief that fled back to Carthage to escape the
places of Tagaste that brought back painful memories of shared experiences. (Confessions,
4.4)
For eight years (376-84) he
tried to support his family and further his career in Carthage. It was a
difficult period in his life. He was becoming increasingly doubtful about the
truth of Manichaeism. For a time he was intrigued by astrology and the writings
of magicians but turned away from them also. At 26 he wrote his first book, but
no one bought it, a truly depressing experience for one who believes that they
have mastered the nature of truth. He was always able to get enough students to
support his family, but he found the Carthaginian scholars disruptive. With his
weak voice and his tendency to be distracted, Augustine was fair game for young
stalwarts more interested in love and wine than logic and wisdom. Indeed,
Augustine discovered that there were very few denizens of Carthage with whom he
could hold an intelligent conversation. The leaders of the Manichaeans were no
better than the novices in providing answers. All in all it was not a propitious
place to be, either to pursue his career or to develop his mind. He decided to
leave North Africa and go to Rome. Monica was dead-set against his plan. By this
time Patritius had died and she had taken as her remaining life-work the
conversion of her wandering son. She was certain (considering his past history)
that to be alone in pagan city without the protection of family and friends
would destroy him. But Augustine had made up his mind and tricked his mother
into believing that he would stay while instead he left on the evening tide.
Augustine arrived in Rome
without money or a job in 383. He became deathly ill and only survived through
the kindness of Manichaean friends. While he had begged for baptism when he was
near death as a boy, now as a young man the thought never entered his mind. He
thought as a Manichaean, not as a Christian, and was dependent financially and
emotionally on his Manichaean companions. Indeed, it was through the
recommendation of the Manichaean Symmachus, Prefect of Rome, that in 384
Augustine reached the pinnacle of his secular career. He was appointed professor
of rhetoric for the city of Milan, the city of the Imperial Court.
By this time he had given up
all belief in the Manichaean doctrines. For a time he lived as a skeptic but
found that wanting too. He still had a residual belief in Christ and an
intuition that there was something more to being human than being a body. This
intuition was confirmed through the influence of the Neoplatonist, Plotinus.
Through his reading of the "Platonists" he was able to perceive the intellectual
validity of asserting the existence of a world of spirit and of a human soul
within which one could possibly even survive death. However, his belief in
spirit still did not mean that the spirit controlled his earthy passions. He
seemed to have all other aspects of his life under control. His new position in
Milan gave him the assured income necessary to support his family. Soon he was
joined in Milan by his wife, his son, his mother Monica, his brother Navigius,
and assorted cousins and friends.
Meanwhile Augustine was
faced with a difficult personal decision. He had reached a point where his
career demanded a proper marriage into a respected Roman family. Such a marriage
would bring both added finances and added influence at the imperial court.
Augustine's love of eleven years was an obstacle. She consented to return to
Africa (leaving Adeodatus with Augustine), and Augustine, with the encouragement
of his mother (who hoped that the stability of marriage might be a step towards
her son's baptism) became engaged to a young daughter of a noble family. However
the girl was too young for an immediate marriage and Augustine was unable to
wait. He himself describes what happened:
I could not wait patiently
for the required two years. I was not a lover of marriage. I was a slave of my
lust. And thus I began an affair with another woman.
Confessions, 6.15
Both intellectually and
morally he was still a distance from conversion to Christianity. He was in a
period of vacuum. The only thing he knew for sure was that he was unhappy. He
had nothing to substitute for his long-held Manichaeism but the dream of going
off somewhere to seek wisdom with like-minded people. He and some friends took
steps to form such a philosophic community but the plan fell apart when they
suddenly realized that those who were married would never get the necessary
permissions from their wives. (Confessions, 6.14)
Looking at Augustine's life
from the outside it seemed that he was about to achieve his goals. But as his
professional life became more ordered, his spiritual life had become more and
more torn. Under the influence of Ambrose's preaching he was coming to see that
the spiritual meaning of the Sacred Scriptures was not as simplistic as he had
thought. However the moral challenge of Christianity to change his life was
still beyond him. It took almost thirty years for him to come to believe in
Catholic Christianity. It took him three more years before he could muster the
strength to act on it. Finally, when he was 33 the conversion of his will
occurred. He made the decision to give up his bad habits and try to live a moral
life. In the Spring of 387 he and his son Adeodatus were baptized by Ambrose in
Milan. The first part of his restless journey was over.
Augustine spent the last
forty years of his life trying to be true to his baptism. He returned to North
Africa in 388 and set up a small community of dedicated Christian laymen in
Tagaste. Its purpose was the study of Scripture and mutual service while living
a life somewhat withdrawn from the hurly-burly of the world. This peace and
quiet was not to last very long. In 391 he made the "mistake" (as he calls it)
of going to Hippo to interview a candidate for his little community. Seeing him
in the church one day, the people demanded that he be ordained their priest. He
accepted on the condition that he could continue his community there in Hippo.
This he did and from that community he began his service of the people of Hippo.
In 395 he was consecrated their bishop and in that position he spent the last 35
years of his life.
They were years of intense
activity filled with preaching to his own people every day and teaching through
his writings the world of Western Christianity. In the course of those thirty
years he combatted (more or less in succession) the powerful challenges of
Manichaeism, Donatism, Pelagianism and (at the very end of his life) Arianism.
He tried to describe how God works in the individual soul through his
Confessions and how God works in history through his City of God.
In his voluminous correspondence and smaller books he commented on the events of
the day and how a human is meant to cope with them. He tried to understand the
origin of the universe through his commentaries on Genesis and tried to
understand the destiny of humans through his commentaries on the writings of St.
Paul and St. John.
In the midst of these
intellectual battles, Augustine witnessed the growing spread of the barbarian
invasions which seemed to threaten civilization itself. Rome fell in 410 and
soon after the Vandals invaded North Africa. Augustine lived with their threat
through the last years of his life, and as he lay dying he could hear the
pounding of the barbarian armies at the gates of his beloved Hippo. To a person
without faith it could easily have seemed that a lifetime of effort had been
wasted. But Augustine was a person of faith and hope and with such support he
was able to die happily despite the turmoil in the world outside. His death
occurred in 430 in his monastery at Hippo. His contemporary biographer,
Possidius, describes the scene as follows:
He died with his body
intact. He could still see and hear and his mind was clear to the very end.
As we looked on and prayed for him he passed in sleep into the land of his
ancestors, well-nourished in good old age.
Possidius, Life of
the Bishop St. Augustine, 31
This summary of Augustine's life and the environment in which he lived is taken from the
introduction of Augustine's World: An Introduction to His Speculative
Philosophy by Donald X. Burt, OSA (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of
America, 1996) and is used with permission.
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