St. Augustine of Hippo

Augustine was born in Tagaste in Roman North Africa to a pagan father, Patricius, and a Christian mother, Monica, whose prayers and tears the Church remembers as the model of every persevering parent. He was educated in rhetoric at Carthage and grew into a brilliant teacher of pagan letters before his conversion.

For nine years he followed the Manichaean sect, then briefly Neoplatonism, restless and divided in himself. The decisive turn came in 386 in a garden in Milan, where he heard a child's voice and opened Paul's epistle to the Romans. He was baptized by Ambrose of Milan at the Paschal Vigil of 387, his mother present, then sailed home to Africa.

Ordained priest at Hippo Regius almost against his will, he was consecrated bishop there in 395 and held that small African see for thirty-five years. He preached without rest, wrote without rest, and answered every controversy of his age, from the Donatists to the Pelagians to the pagan accusation that the sack of Rome in 410 was Christianity's fault.

His Confessions are the first interior autobiography in Christian literature. His City of God reframes history. His one hundred twenty-four Tractates on John, delivered as a homiletic series to his African flock, walk the entire Gospel verse by verse. He reposed at Hippo on August 28, 430, while the Vandals besieged the city, with the penitential Psalms pinned to the wall above his bed.