Confessions of St. Augustine

It could fairly be maintained that whatever in Augustine's character may be called sanctity was the result of his enforced ordination. The personality described in the Confessions, even allowing for the convert's desire to present his past life in a poor light, is not an attractive one: brilliant, charming and fascinating, he was also egoistic, ambitious and very selfish. The very appeal which asceticism held for him, even in his early years when he admired, without imitating, the self-denial of the Manichaean Elect, throws into harsh relief his own determination to seek advancement, even when this involved jettisoning the mother of Adeodatus, the companion of some fourteen years, in order to make an advantageous marriage. The decision on his conversion to Catholic Christianity in 386 to abandon his hopes for worldly success and to return to Africa certainly represented a major sacrifice and was a good omen for the future; but it was his enforced ordination in 391, which has conferred immortality on the otherwise undistinguished port of Hippo, which brought Augustine into contact with ordinary African Christians, the uneducated and illiterate, upon whom he was to lavish so much care in later years - it is difficult not to be moved by the reference, at the end of Book IX of the Confessions, to his fellow-Christians, 'Thy servants, my brothers, Thy sons, my masters, whom with voice and heart and writings I serve' and whose prayers he asks for the souls of his parents, Monica and Patricius.

Our knowledge of Augustine's life comes from four main sources. First, from the Confessions--his own account of his career from his birth to his baptism, and the subsequent death of his mother at Rome , in the autumn of 387. Secondly, the Life by his friend and fellow bishop, Possidius of Calama (Guelma), which is primarily concerned with his career from his ordination until his death at Hippo in 430, when the Vandals were besieging the town. Thirdly, we have the evidence afforded by Augustine's writings, in particular by his letters, his sermons, and the work called the Retractationes, composed towards the end of his life in 426, in which he passed in review all his works published up to that time, explained the circumstances which led to their composition, and indicated points on which he had changed his opinion or modified it in the light of subsequent reflection or fresh evidence. Finally, we have evidence afforded by the writings of others, both friends and enemies.

Of these four classes of source materials, it is plain that the Confessions are of particular importance, inasmuch as they represent Augustine's own account of his early career and of the circumstances which brought him into the Catholic Church. The question then arises: to what extent are we able to draw on the Confessions as an historical source? Even if they are to be regarded as autobiography- and they are autobiographical only in a somewhat wide use of the word --the fact that they were written in 397 at the earliest means that a decade had already elapsed between Augustine's conversion and baptism, so that, at the time when he began to write about his religious evolution, he was bishop of Hippo and the most distinguished theologian in Africa. In the very nature of things, he would tend to regard his past life in the light of his present spiritual condition, and we must be prepared to make allowance for this in using the Confessions as a biographical source. But does this mean that we are justified in taking the Confessions at their face value in gathering facts for recording Augustine's life?