The Genius of St.
Augustine
Of all the Fathers of the Church, the greatest of all is St. Augustine of
Hippo. Jurgens at the beginning of his third volume makes the poignant
comment, “If we were faced with the unlikely proposition of having to
destroy completely either the works of Augustine or the works of all the
other Fathers and Writers, I have little doubt that all the others would have
to be sacrificed. Augustine will remain.”¹ Dom Leclercq states, “He is also,
perhaps, the one who most fully understood Christianity, who has felt it the
most passionately; and in the twenty centuries of its history, we can see
none but St. Paul to whom he may be compared.”
Aurelius Augustine was born in the small town of Tagaste in Numidia on
November 13, 354, of a pagan father of loose morals and Christian mother.
His father, Patricius, converted to Christianity in the fourteenth year of his
marriage. His mother was the ever-famous model of motherhood, piety and
perseverance, St. Monica.
From the very beginning, St. Monica instilled in Augustine a deep
conviction of God’s providence and a love of the name of Jesus: “The
name of Thy Savior and Son had my tender heart, even with my mother’s
milk, devoutly drunk in and deeply treasured.” St. Monica had her son
signed with the cross and enrolled among the catechumens. Once, when
very ill, St. Augustine asked for baptism, but after the danger passed he
unfortunately deferred receiving the sacrament according to the custom
then in North Africa. During his early formal education in Tagaste and then
Madaura, St. Augustine clearly showed himself to be extraordinarily gifted.
Patricius, proud of his sons’ intellectual achievements in the local schools,
determined to send him to Carthage for advanced study. St. Augustine was
now seventeen years old. However, it was in Carthage that he fell into a
dissolute lifestyle and entered an irregular relationship with a concubine:
“banqueted upon iniquity”, as he later described it. From this relationship
1
Rev. William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers,
Copyright © 1970 by
The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Vol. 3, p. 1.
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