Augustine of Hippo
354–430 4 entries
Biography
Augustine of Hippo was a theologian and philosopher from Roman North Africa, one of the most influential thinkers of Christianity. He was born in 354 in Thagaste, in today’s Algeria, to a pagan father and a Christian mother, Monica, and taught rhetoric in Carthage, Rome and Milan. For years he looked for the truth in the teaching of the Manichaeans and then in Neoplatonism, until, under the influence of Bishop Ambrose of Milan, he converted to Christianity in 386 and was baptised the following Easter.
Back in Africa he became a priest and, from about 396, bishop of Hippo, the city on the coast where he spent the rest of his life. His Confessions, the story of his restless youth and his conversion told as a prayer to God, is often called the first autobiography of the West. After the Goths sacked Rome in 410, he wrote The City of God, a vast work on history, the state and the Christian faith. He died in 430, while the Vandals were besieging Hippo, and is honoured as a saint and a Doctor of the Church.
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