St. Augustine (354-430)
Bishop of Hippo, and, with St. Ambrose, Jerome, and Gregory the Great, one of the four great Fathers of the Church. Born in Tagaste, Algeria, of a Christian mother and a pagan father, he first sought his salvation in Manichaeism, and led a life of promiscuous pleasure-seeking. He sought to establish himself as a rhetorician first at Tagaste, later at Carthage, Rome and Milan. In Milan, listening to the sermons of Bishop Ambrose, he was converted to Christianity (386), after which he returned to his hometown.
Invited to preach at Hippo Regius, the modern Bona, he so impressed the congregation that lie was appointed assistant to the aging bishop, whom he succeeded into the bishopric (395). His most important work, The Confessions (397), constitutes the first completely honest self-analysis in the history of literature. See also The City of God (begun 413). His total work is enormous in volume and encyclopedic in scope. He has justly been called the "Christian Aristotle," for it is he who first succeeded in compacting the truths of religion into a system. His theology has been of lasting influence on Christian dogma and philosophy.
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