Saint Augustine of Hippo, Doctor of Grace

August 28

AD 354 — AD 430

Augustinian (Patriarch)

Historically Documented

I. Overview & Intellectual Stature

Saint Augustine of Hippo is universally acknowledged as the greatest Latin Father of the Church and one of the most influential theologians in Christian history. Designated the "Doctor of Grace" (Doctor Gratiae), his monumental writings—including Confessions, The City of God, and On the Trinity—shaped the Western theological, philosophical, and monastic tradition for over fifteen centuries.

II. Early Life, Intellectual Wandering & Saint Monica's Tears

Aurelius Augustinus was born on November 13, 354 AD, in Thagaste (modern Souk Ahras, Algeria) in Roman North Africa. His father, Patricius, was a pagan civic official who converted on his deathbed; his mother, Saint Monica, was a devout Christian who prayed unceasingly for her son's conversion.

Educated in rhetoric at Madauros and Carthage, Augustine succumbed in his youth to moral laxity, taking a concubine with whom he fathered a son, Adeodatus (372 AD). Intellectually ambitious, he rejected Sacred Scripture as unpolished compared to Ciceronian Latin and joined the Manichaean sect, a dualistic heresy that claimed to resolve the problem of evil through cosmic conflict between Light and Darkness.

III. Milan, Saint Ambrose & Miraculous Conversion

In 384 AD, Augustine secured a prestigious appointment as imperial professor of rhetoric in Milan. There, he encountered Saint Ambrose, the holy Bishop of Milan, whose sublime allegorical preaching dismantled Augustine's intellectual objections to the Old Testament. Influenced by Neoplatonic philosophy, Augustine recognized the spiritual nature of God and evil as a privation of good (privatio boni).

The decisive spiritual breakthrough occurred in August 386 AD in a Milanese garden. Tormented by moral weakness, Augustine heard a child's voice chanting: ("Take up and read; take up and read"). Opening Saint Paul's Epistles at random, his eyes fell upon Romans 13:13-14: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy: But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences."