Latin theologist. Father of the Church. Augustin d' Hippone (Aurelius Augustinus), or holy Augustin.

Born in the Roman province from Numidie, Augustin is the subject of all solicitudes of a pagan father, civil servant of the Romain Empire who intends it for the highest loads in the imperial administration, and of a Christian mother, the future holy Monique, who will transmit her enthusiastic faith to him. Of Berber and probably punic ascent, it will be high in the Roman culture and will know of another language only Latin.  

The long tour which will lead it to the European cities begins after its first classes with Tagaste and Madaure. At seventeen years, it arrives at Carthage. While taking share with the turbulent life of the students of the capital of Roman Africa, it is formed with rhetoric, through the study of Virgile, of the historians and the Latin poets. But he discovers only philosophy in Hortensius de Cicéron, which he opposes to the Bible in which he sees a collection of irrational stories intended for ignoramuses. He aspires to “the immortality of wisdom”. This taste for spirituality does not alleviate however its passions in love: at the same time, the young Augustin takes a partner, on whom it will remain dependant during more than fifteen years. Become father into 372, it finds an unhoped-for balance while dealing with his Adéodat son.  

Waked up with philosophy, Augustin obstinately seeks an answer at the origin of the Evil. He meets Manicheans then. For the disciples of Mani (216-277), the world is divided between the Good and the Evil, and darkness of the Matter darkens the light of the Spirit. Allured by the doctrines manichéenne, Augustin joined the sect in his combat to release the luminous substance that each one carries in him. This adhesion - which will last nine years - also gives again the hope to him to release its heart of the prison of the flesh.  

But the disappointing meeting with the bishop Faustus Manichean precipitates his rupture with a dualistic thought - captive of the opposition of two principles - which does not admit faculty to want and denies freedom and the human responsibility.  

In 374, Augustin is named professor of eloquence with Carthage, then in Milan from 384. Works of the Neoplatonic philosophers Plotin and Porphyre radically change its vision of the world and the joys of contemplation reveal to him. The reading of the Epistles of Paul, the influence of his mother, Monique, and of the bishop of Milan, Ambroise, lead it to approach the Christians. As he tells it in the Confessions, after “the movement of its hesitations” he saw one intense moment of interior tearing. This “gravity” decides it to convert. 

With autumn 386, he writes three works, Against the academicians, the happy Life and the Order, which make the synthesis of the three great traditions: Platonic, Christian and érudite. In 387, in the night of Easter, he is baptized in Milan by Ambroise. 

Augustin and his decide them to return to Africa. At the time of a halt with Ostie, little before death Monique, mother and son makes an exceptional experiment of ecstasy. During two years of retirement, Augustin writes a treaty (On the music), a dialog with his Adéodat son on divine pedagogy (the Master) and a polemical work against the Manicheans (the True Religion).  

Whereas it founds a monastery with Hippone (today Annaba) shortly after the death of his son and that its reputation does not cease growing in Christian Africa, it is brought to accept the priesthood: during an office chaired by the old Valerius bishop, it is acclaimed by the assistance which requires its immediate ordination.

Consequently, Augustin redoubles activity: a public debate opposes it, on on August 28th, 392, with a former friend Manichean, it directs the monastery which it installed in the garden of the church with Hippone, and composes its first comments on the Psalms.  

Devoted bishop into 395, it succeeds Valerius into 396, Hippone. The Church of Africa is divided by the schism of the donatists: the heirs to the Donat bishop, who engage in the conflict of the Berber farmers against the Roman colonists, preach a “Church of pure”. The role of Augustin will be capital in the doctrinal fight and quarrels against the donatism and the extremists who resist, by takeovers by force, with catholic control. In 405, when an imperial edict subjects the donatists to the laws striking the heretics, it contributes effectively to the dissolution of the Church donatist in Africa and cannot prevent bloody repression. At the same time, it composes several works against the donatism, two major treaties, Of the Christian doctrines, where it makes Bible the base of the Christian culture, and On the Trinity, its principal dogmatic work.  

In August 410, Rome is invaded by Goths and partly burned. For Augustin, it is a disaster without precedent, but he believes in the survival of the Roman and Christian Empire. Against the pagan ideal and its values, it then builds the monument of the City of God.  

After the victory over the Church donatist - consequently rejected into clandestinity and its members continued with meticulousness and cruelty -, Augustin carries out another combat, this time against Pélage, a Christian ascetic come from British Isles which had gained with its ideas of the disciples in Rome, in Africa and Holy Land where he had preached austere piety and absolute obedience with the commands of God. For him, the baptism is the beginning of a heroic life, founded on freedom of choice in the action. Allotting a great force to the human will, it rejects the “original sin categorically”. Augustin defends against Pélage his design of the divine grace. After several interventions near the episcopal see of Rome and with the court of Ravenne, it obtains into 418 the excommunication of its adversaries.  

The old age of Augustin is marked by the battle which opposes it to Julien d' Eclane, the chief of the pélagiens after 418, who shows it to repeat the lesson received formerly Manicheans. Augustin presents it like an arrogant intellectual, a dilettante society man. The enigma and the horror of the Evil obscure the last years of Augustin. At this point in time it composes its treaty Predestination of the saints. It writes also Retractations, remarks critical, and especially explanatory, on its own works.  

In 429 and 430, the Vandals invade North Africa and besiege Hippone. Augustin, taken fever, spends his last days to be requested and dies on on August 28th, 430.

The City of God
With the City of God - the work intended to answer the pagan charge according to which the collapse of Rome in 410 was the result of the religious upheaval - Augustin proposes an imposing vision of the history of humanity. If he considers that any empire is a “vast armed robbery”, he affirms however that the love of glory led the Romans to deploy remarkable virtues. However these virtues can be achieved only at the citizens of the Heavenly Jerusalem. He opposes, indeed, the city of God in the terrestrial city. The conflict is symbolized by contrast between Babylon, place of the exile, and Jerusalem, fatherland of the release. A city faithful to God is battling against a subjugated city with the rebellious angels, until in the Church. The last judgment of Christ will separate them. While waiting, the human society must live like a city of “pérégrins”, foreigners resident of which the particular status was familiar to the men of Antiquity. Augustin does not preach an escape out of the world, but an attitude of total obedience towards God, alone dispenser of the goods, the terrestrial stay having itself a providential end. The concrete Church takes part, without merging with it, at the company in conformity with the divine plan. And as long as “the order of times persists”, even if progress is possible, the inextricable mixture of the Good and the Evil characterizes any political State, even the Church.  

The conflict with Pélage led Augustin to formulate some of his most famous ideas. According to him, all humanity suffers from the sin, since Adam, and only the grace of God can lead towards the cure its nature which is vitiated by this original fault. The freedom of the man, in itself, is impotent. Thus true freedom, confirmation of the will in the Good by the grace, it tends to perfection reserved to happy in beyond. The man does not have merits, safety is an absolutely free gift.  

Augustinism
Augustin is the large Master of the Occidental culture to the XVII E century and, through him, the Platonic idealism dominates theology. Its theses nourish resistance to the thought of Thomas d' Aquin, to the XIII E century; the Thomism refers, him, in Aristote, and gives more importance to the experimental data and built a firm method of argumentation. As of the XIV E century takes place the fusion of the augustinism and the Thomism. From the XVI E century, with the Protestant reforms, in fact especially the controversies about the divine grace put at the foreground the augustinism. For Luther and Calvin, who affirm the absolute power, absolute and irresistible, of God, the freedom of the man does not have a place in the history of the hello. The justification does not depend on works, but on the only faith. And Calvin works out very precise doctrines of predestination. To the XVII E century, the debates take a new rise, around Jansénius, for which the grace cannot be obtained by virtuous control, the prayer and the practice of the sacraments; even the right ones, to achieve the commands, need the efficacious grace, granted by the only mercy of God. The rigor Jansenist attracts beings of exception, like Pascal. As for the pessimism which it generates, it impregnates the theater of Root, whose characters seem rejected.  

The conflicts caused by the interpretation of the augustinism largely contributed to the modern design of the human condition and difficult freedom.