His most famous work are the Confessions. Numerous forms of religious life refer to him, including theOrder of Sant'Agostino (OSA), called the Augustinians: spread all over the world, together with Scalzi Augustinians (Oad) and to Augustinians Recolletti (Oar), constitute in the Catholic Church the main spiritual legacy of the Hippona saint, to whose Rule of life Numerous other congregations are also inspired, in addition to the regular canons of Sant'Agostino. To him we owe the birth of the various rules of monasticism (Regula Magistri And Rule of San Benedetto), S.Cesario D'ArlesIn fact, it was inspired by his writings both for his sermons and for the foundation of some monastic orders. Some African schismatic churches, phenomena halfway between the so -called Small churches and the syncretism (in particular those provided with apostolic succession), arose during the XIX and of the 20th century, they have self-defined Agostinist, in consideration of the African origin of the saint.

To learn more, see the item Thought of Sant'Agostino d'Ippona.

Biography [change]

Agostino in a fresco of Sandro Botticelli

Agostino's life has been handed down with great detail in his work Confessions, his moral history, in his Portraits, which describe the evolution of his thought, and in the Life of Agostino, written by his friend Power, which narrates the apostolate of the saint.

From birth to conversion (354-387) [change]

Agostino, of ethnicity Berbera,^[3] but of totally Hellenistic-Roman culture, he was born to Tagaste November 13, 354. Tagaste, currently Souk Ahras in Algeria, located about 100 km south-west of Hippona, it was, in those days, a small free city of number of proconsular recently converted to Donatism. Although very respectable, his family was not rich, and his father, Patrizio, one of the Curiales (municipal councilors) of the city, it was a pagan; In the long run, however, for the influence of his wife MonicaPatrizio came to conversion.

Childhood and adolescence [change]

Agostino received two opposite visions of the world from his parents, often lived in conflict with each other. However, the mother, venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church, will play a great role in the education and life of the son. Agostino received a Christian education from her and was enrolled among the catechumens. Once, when he was very sick, he asked for the baptismo, but, having soon vanished every danger, he decided to defer the moment of receiving the sacrament, thus adapting to a widespread custom of that period. His association with "men of prayer" left three great concepts deeply engraved in his soul: the existence of a divine Providence, the existence of a future life with terrible punishment and, above all, Christ the Savior.

African by birth and, therefore, probably, native speakers Berbera, learned and used the Punic and the Latin, while it had difficulty with the Greek, the other great language, together with Latin, of the culture of the time. Patrician, proud of the success of his son in the schools of Tagaste e Madaura, decided to send him to Card To prepare him for the forensic career, but he wanted many months to collect the necessary money, and Agostino spent his sixteenth year in Tagaste, in an idleness where a great intellectual and moral crisis was unleashed. He himself would later narrate how, dominated by a profound restlessness, he was sucked into a vortex of passions, and tried almost attraction for the Sin, as happened for example on the occasion of the famous theft of pears, which Agostino organized together with some peers:

"Carthagese" crisis [change]

At the beginning of the crisis he prayed, but without the sincere desire to be listened to and, when he reached Carthage, towards the end of the 370, everything that happened to him led him to deviate more and more by the ancient course of his life: the many seductions of the big city that was still half a pagan, the dismissal of the other students, the theaters, the thrill of his literary success and an immense desire to always be the first, even in sin. In this city, passionate about philosophy, he began to study most of the main texts of Hellenistic-Latin culture. Equipped with a strong critical sense and animated by a desire for truth, the years of his youth passed into the insatiable research of the meaning of life. Not long after having arrived in Carthage, however, Agostino was forced to confess to Monica who had a relationship with a woman, who had given him a son, Adequato (372), and with whom he lived in concubinage For fifteen years. They separated in 386, when she left him to Milan To go to Numidia with the promise that would be back.

There are contrasting opinions in the evaluation of this crisis. Some, like Theodor Mommsen, highlight it, others like Loofs (Realcyklopädie III edition, II, 268) reproached this conclusion in Mommsen or shows Clementi towards Agostino, when they affirmed that, in those days, the Church allowed the concubinated. Agostino, however, maintained a certain dignity and, since the age of nineteen, had a genuine desire to break the chains: in 373, reading theHortensesius Of Marco Tullio Cicero caused a change of direction of his life. It imbued with love for the wisdom that Cicero so eloquently commended and, from that moment, Agostino considered the rhetoric Only a profession, who practiced as a professor. His heart had completely turned to philosophy.

Landing for Manicheism [change]

In the 373 his anxiety for the search for the absoluto made him land at Manicism, of which, together with his Onorato friend, he became one of the greatest exponents and disseminates. Agostino himself tells that he was attracted by the promises of a philosophy free by the constraints of faith; from the boasters of the sleeves who claimed to have discovered contradictions in the Holy Scriptures; And above all, by the hope of finding in their doctrine a scientific explanation of nature and its most mysterious phenomena. Agostino's investigator was enthusiastic about the natural sciences and the sleeves declared that nature had no secrets for Fausto di Milevi, their doctor. However, this adhesion was not free from doubts that gripped him: being tortured by the problem of the origin of the bad, Agostino, waiting to resolve him, gave credit to the existence of a conflict between two principles. There was also a very powerful charm in moral irresponsibility that was from a doctrine that denied freedom and attributed the commission of crimes to an external principle. Once joined to this group, Agostino dedicated himself to him with all the ardor of his character; He read all the books, adopted and defended all his ideas. His very active proselytism also convinced his friends Alipio and Romanian, his patron of Tagaste, the friends of his father who were incurring the expenses of his studies.

During this period it was Manichean that the literary faculties of Agostino reached their full development, when he was still a simple Carthage student.

Teaching [change]

At the end of his studies he should have entered the Litigiosum forum, but preferred his literary career. Possidio tells that he returned to Tagaste to "teach grammar". The young professor enchanted his pupils, one of whom, Alipio, just younger than his teacher, not to leave him after following him between the sleeves, was later baptized with him to Milan, and then, probably, to become bishop of Tagaste, his hometown.

Monica was deeply sorry for theheresy of Agostino and would not even have received it at home or made to sit at his table, if he had not been recommended by a bishop who declared that "the son of so many tears and prayers could not perish". Shortly after Agostino he returned to Carthage, where he continued to teach rhetoric. His talents were also of greater advantage over this larger stage and, through an alleged search for the liberal arts, his intellect reached full maturity. Here he won a poetry tournament and the proconsul Vindiciano publicly conferred on him competitive crown.

It was in this moment of literary intoxication, when he had just completed his first work on theaesthetics (now lost) that Agostino began to repudiate the Manicheism. Even when he was in his maximum enthusiasm, however, the teachings of Hands They had been far from calm his restlessness. Despite having been accused of having become a priest of the "sect", It had never started or enumerated among the" elected ", but remained a" auditor ", the lowest degree in the hierarchy. He himself provided the reasons for his disenchantment: first of all the inclination of Manichea philosophy - "destroy everything and do not build anything" -; then their immorality in contrast with their apparent virtue; So the weakness of their arguments in the controversy with the "Catholics", to whose precepts based on the scriptures their only reply was: "The sacred scriptures were falsified". But the main reason was that among them did not find science (understood in the modern sense of the word), that knowledge of nature and its laws that promised him. When he asked them about the movements of the stars, none of them was able to answer them. "Wait Fausto", they said to him, "he will explain everything to you." Finally, in 383, Fausto di Mileve, the famous Manicheus bishop, arrived in Carthage. Agostino visited him and asked him, but he discovered only vulgar rhetoric in his responses, absolutely extraneous to any scientific culture. The spell broke up and, even if Agostino did not immediately abandon the group, his mind began to refuse the sleeve doctrines.

Ambrogio, Archbishop of Milan

Meeting with Ambrogio [change]

In the 383 Agostino, at the age of 29, sold to the irresistible attraction that Italy had for him; Due to the reluctance of the mother to separate from him, he had to resort to a subterfuge and embark with the coverage of the night. As soon as they came to Rome, where he continued to attend the Manichea community, he fell seriously. When he recovered, he opened a school of rhetoric but, disgusted by the tricks of his pupils, who shamelessly defrauded him with their education taxes, asked for a vacant place as a professor a Milan. The praefectus urbi Fifth Aurelio Simmaco He helped him get his place with the intention of countering the fame of the bishop Ambrogio.^[5] After visiting the Bishop, however, he felt attracted to his speeches and began to follow his preaching regularly.

Neoplatonism and Christianity [change]

At first he turned to the academic philosophy, attracted by theirs skepticism pessimistic, disappointed as it was from Manicheism and now distrusting any form of religious belief. He tormented him most of all the problem of bad: If God exists and is omnipotent, why can't he annihilate him?

But the meeting with philosophy was then decisive neo-platonic, from which he was thrilled. He barely read the works of Plato and of Plot, when the hope of finding the truth was lit again. Once again he began to dream that he and his friends could lead a life dedicated to the search for it, a life without all vulgar aspirations such as honors, wealth, or pleasure, and with celibacy as a rule.^[7] But it was just a dream; His passions still made him slave.

Meanwhile, Monica, who had reached her son in Milan, convinced him to engage, but his promised bride was too young, and even if Agostino greeted Adodato's mother, his place was soon taken from another. Thus he had to cross a last period of struggle and anguish, during which his desire to convert could not completely prevail over the idea of ​​the pleasures to which he should have renounced. Until, also thanks to the precious contributions of the Bishop Ambrogio, he sensed how the truth, the central theme of its philosophical itinerary, is not a simple fact in itself to be dominated, which he perceived it in the courts of the Roman Empire, but which is dominated by it, because it is something absolute, total and universal. Understanding how truth is not an object but a subject, that is, a lively and personal entity, just as it is presented in the Gospels^[8], he had the certainty that Jesus was the only way to come to you, and that the truth man first adheres with his way of life. It was an interview with Simpliciano, an future successor of Ambrogio, who told Agostino the story of the conversion of the famous neo-Platonic rhetorician Vittorino,^[9] to prepare the road to conversion. This took place at the age of 33, in a garden in Milan, where Agostino heard the voice of a girl who was singing Tolle Lege, that is, "take and laws", an invitation that he reported to Bible, which at that point opened at random by falling on a passage of Paolo di Tarso (September 386). A few days later, Agostino, while he was sick, taking advantage of the autumn holidays, resigned from his work as a teacher, he went with Monica, Adeodato, and his friends in Cassisiacum, the countryside residence of Real. There he dedicated himself in search of the true philosophy which, for him, was now inseparable by Christianity.

From conversion to episcopate (386-396) [change]

Agostino receives the baptismo from the hands of Ambrogio

Agostino gradually met Christian doctrine and, in his mind, began to merge Platonic philosophy and the dogmas revealed. Cassisiacum's loneliness allowed him to make a long -chased dream come true: in his books Contra AcademicosAgostino described the ideal serenity of this existence, animated only by the passion for truth. He also completed the education of his young friends, now with common readings, now with philosophical conferences to which, sometimes, Monica also invited, and whose stories, transcribed by a secretary, were the basis of the "dialogues". Seide would have remembered later in his Letters The mornings and the evenings of philosophy during which Agostino used to undertake disquisitions that raised a lot above the clichés. The favorite themes of these conferences were the truth, the certainty (Contra Academicos), true happiness in philosophy (De Blessed Vita), the providential order of the world and its mathematical perfection (De Music), the problem of evil (De order) and finally God and the soul (Soliloquy, De immortalitate animae).

Towards the beginning of the Lent of 387, Agostino went to Milan where, with Adeodato and Alipio, he took place among the competent to be baptized by Ambrogio on the day of Easter.^[10] It was at this point that Agostino, Alipio, and Extra They decided to retire to the solitude of Africa. Agostino remained in Milan until autumn, continuing his works (De immortalitate animae And De Music). Then, while he was about to embark on Host, Monica died. Agostino, then, remained for many months a Rome mainly dealing with the refutation of Manicheism. He returned to Africa only after the death of the usurper Magno Massimo (August 388) and, after a short stay in Carthage, returned to Tagaste.

Immediately after his arrival, he decided to start following his ideal of perfect life, dedicated to that God who had come to love in adulthood:

He began by selling all his assets and giving the poor. Then he and his friends retired in his plot of land, which had already been alienated, to lead a common life in poverty, in prayer, and in the study of sacred literature. The book De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus It is the result of the meetings held during this retreat, in which it also wrote the De Genesis Contra Manicheos, The De Magistro and the De vera religion.

Agostino did not think he became priest and, for fear of theepiscopate, also ran away from the cities in which an election was needed. One day, having been called to Hippona by a friend, he was praying in a church when a group of people suddenly surround him, they consoled him and implore Valerio, the bishop, to raise him to the priesthood; Despite his fears, Agostino was ordered in 391. The new priest considered his ordination as one more reason to resume religious life in Tagaste and Valerio approved so enthusiastically that he put him available to the properties of the Church, authorizing him to found a monastery.

His five -year priestly priestly ministry was very fruitful: Valerio authorized him to preach despite the African use that reserved that ministry for bishops only; He fought heresy, especially the Manichea and his success was remarkable. Fortunato, one of their great doctors, that Agostino had challenged in public, was so humiliated by the defeat that fled from the hip. He also abolished the use of keeping banquets in the chapels of martyrs. THE'October 8th 393 He took part in the Plenary Council of Africa chaired by Aurelio, bishop of Carthage, where, against the request of the bishops, he was obliged to compose a dissertation which, in its complete form, later, became the treaty De Fide et Symbolo.

Bishop of Hippona (395-430) [change]

Weakened by the now advanced age, Valerio, bishop of Hippona, obtained from Aurelio, Primate of Africa, that Agostino was associated with his headquarters as coadjutor. Therefore Agostino had to resign himself to the consecration from the hands of Megalio, the primacy of Numidia. He was forty -two years old, and he would have occupied the hippone headquarters for the next 34. The new bishop understood well how to combine the exercise of his pastoral duties with the austerity of religious life and, although he had left his monastery, his episcopal residence became a monastery where he lived a community life with his clergy, who observed a religious poverty. The Hippo's episcopal house became a real nursery for the new founders of monasteries who soon spread throughout Africa and for the bishops who occupied the nearby locations. Power^[11] He listed ten friends and disciples of the saint who were high to the episcopate. In this way Agostino gained the title of Patriarch of religious and renewal of ecclesiastical life in Africa.

His doctrinal activities, the influence of which he was destined to last a long time, were manifold: he frequently preached, sometimes for five consecutive days; He wrote letters that transmitted his solution to the problems of the time to the whole world; he left his imprint on all African councils in which he participated, for example those of Carthage of the 398, 401, 407, 419 and of Mileve of 416 And 418; Finally, he fastenedly struggled against all heresies.

Manichea controversy and the "problem of evil" [change]

After Augustine became bishop, the zeal who, since the time of his baptism, manifested in bringing his former co -religionaries within the church, took on a more paternal form without however losing his ancient ardor. Among the most memorable events that took place during this dispute, the great victory of the 404 On Felice, an "elected" and great Manichean doctor. He was preaching to Hippona and Agostino invited him to a public dispute, at the end of which Felice declared himself won, converted and, together with Agostino, signed the acts of the dispute.

In his works Agostino subsequently confused: Hands (397), Fausto di Mileve (400), Secondino (405) and (around the 415) the priscillianists, of which he had spoken to him Paolo Orosio. These works contain his opinions on the "problem of evil", opinions based on optimism deriving from the idea that every work of God is good and that the only source of evil is the freedom of creatures.^[12] Agostino defended free will, even in man, with this ardor that his works against the sleeves are a rich source of arguments for this problem.

Agostino operated a first distinction between the physical evil of the body and the moral evil of the soul, linked to sin. In this way he exceeded a widespread belief in the previous period, which conceived the disease and pain as a consequence and a sort of divine punishment of human actions. Agostino excluded this possibility since "God is love", and a possible expiation of sins is placed in an otherworldly life. Pain, hunger, disease and sin, however, have the same metaphysical, ontological origin, are lack of being, in the soul and in the body, as the classical philosophy theorized. Evil is not conceivable by God, while it is by man, who can implement it since it is created free, "in the image and likeness of God", as Genese says. In this sense, man can hurt, while God does not. This does not mean that man is freer, or that Christian divinity is not omnipotent, but that man can errand, commit acts that make him imperfect and unhappy. Do not commit evil is not a limit, but a sign of perfection.

Agostino, like Socrates, argued ethical intellectualism, that is, that evil manifests itself out of ignorance, and again excludes evil from divine nature because this is omniscient. In other words, God cannot do evil for an ontological reason, because evil is a lack of being, while he is "essence", which has nothing outside of himself, and for a gnoseological-ethical, for which those who have knowledge and are truly free does not commit acts related to the ignorance of their own good, and who deny their freedom. Man is free to the point of denying his innate freedom, making evil; The source of being and knowledge are the same, and from both derives the exclusion of an ethical deviation in a perfect being.^[13]

The Donistist controversy and the theory of the Church [change]

The donatista schism It was the last episode of the disputes mountaineers And Novazianist that agitated the Church since the second century. While the East was investigating the divine problem in various aspects and Christological Of the "word", the West, undoubtedly due to its most practical vocation, arose the moral problem of sin in all its forms. The main problem was the holiness of the Church; Could the sinner have been forgiven and stay inside? In Africa, the question concerned in particular the holiness of the hierarchy. The bishops of Numidia who, in 312, they had refused to accept Ceciliano's consecration to the Carthage headquarters by a traitor as valid, they had started one schism who had asked these serious issues: do hierarchical powers depend on the moral dignity of the presbyter? How can the unworthiness of its ministers be compatible with the holiness of the Church?

Having been identified with a political movement, perhaps with a national movement against Roman domination, at the time of the arrival of Agostino in Hippona, the schism had reached immense proportions. However, inside it is easy to discover a trend of antisocial revenge that the emperors had to fight with severe laws. The sect known as "soldiers of Christ", and called by Catholics "Circumconcellion"(" Briganti "," Vagabondi "), associated with schismatics, was characterized by fanatic destructiveness, causing severe legislation by the emperors.

The history of the Agostino struggles with donatists is also that of its change of opinion on the use of rigid measures against heretics. Even the Church of Africa, whose councils had been the soul, followed it in this change. Agostino, initially, tried to find the unit through conferences and friendly disputes. In African councils he inspired various conciliatory measures, sent ambassadors at the donatists to invite them to return to the church or, at least, to urge them to send deputies to a conference (403). The donatists accepted these invitations first with silence, then with insults and finally with such violence that Possidio, bishop of Calamet And friend of Agostino, he escaped death by pure chance, the bishop of Bagaper He was left covered with horrible injuries and the life of the bishop of Ippona suffered various attacks.^[14] This violence of Circconcellions required a hard repression, and Augustine, learning of the many conversions that followed, since then approved the use of rigid laws, although never wanting to be the heresy that was punishable with death.^[15]

Despite this, the bishops were still in favor of a conference with schismatics and, in 410, a edict promulgated by the emperor Honorius He put an end to the refusal of the donatists. In June 411, in the presence of 286 Catholic bishops and 279 donatist bishops, a solemn conference was organized in Carthage. The spokespersons of the donatists were Petiliano di Costantina, Primiano di Carthage and Emeritus of Caesarea, Catholic speakers Aurelio di Carthage and Agostino. At the historical question under discussion, the bishop of Hippona experienced the innocence of Ceciliano and his happy consecrator, supporting, in the dogmatic debate, the Catholic thesis that the Church, as long as it exists on earth, can, without losing its holiness, tolerating sinners within it in the interest of their conversion. On behalf of the emperor, the proconsul Marcellino sanctioned the victory of the Catholics over all the points under discussion.

Pelagian controversy [change]

The end of the donatist controversy coincided with the beginning of a new theological dispute that committed Agostino to his death. Africa, where Pelagio and his disciple Heavenly they had refuge after the sack of Rome by Alaric, had become the main diffusion center of the Pelagian movement. Already in 412 a council held in Carthage had condemned the Pelagians for their opinions on the doctrine of original sin, but, thanks to Agostino's activism, the condemnation of the Pelagians, who had had the upper hand in a synod held a Diospolis in Palestine, was repeated by the subsequent councils held in Carthage and Mileve and confirmed by Pope Innocent I In the 417. A second period of Pelagian activism developed in Rome; Pope Zosimo He was initially convinced by Celestio but, after being convinced by Agostino, in 418 He pronounced a solemn condemnation against the Pelagians. Later the dispute was continued in writing against Giuliano di Eclano, who had taken the group's guide and violently attacked Augustine.

Towards the 426 the movement of Sempelagiani, whose first members were the monks of HARDROLUM, in Africa, followed by those of Marseille guided by Giovanni Cassiano, abbot of San Vittore. They tried to mediate between Agostino and Pelagio claiming that grace should be granted only to those who deserve it and denied it to others. Informed of their opinions from Prospero d'Aquitania, the saint wrote the De praedestination sanctorum, in which he explained that any desire for salvation was due to "Grace of God"That, therefore, completely controlled our predestination.

Aryan controversy and last years [change]

Tomb in the Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d'oro In Pavia.

In 426, at the age of 72, wishing to save his city the tumult of an episcopal election after his death, Agostino pushed both the clergy that the people to acclaim like their own auxiliary and successor the deacon Heracium.

In those years Africa was shocked by the revolt of Comes Boniface (427); the Visigoths sent by the empress Galla Placidia To counter Bonifacio and i Vandals that these had called to his help were all Aryan And, following the imperial troops, an Ariano bishop entered Hippona Massimino. Agostino defended his faith in a public conference (428) and with various writings. Being deeply grieved for the devastation of Africa, he worked for a reconciliation between the Comes Bonifacio and the Empress; peace was restored, but not with Gumeric, the Vandali king. Bonifacio, hunted from Carthage, sought refuge in Hippona, where many bishops had already refuge to look for protection in this well -fortified city, but the vandals besieged him for eighteen months. Trying to control his anguish, Agostino continued to refute Giuliano di Eclano, but, at the beginning of the siege, he was hit by a fatal disease and, after three months, the August 28th 430 at the age of 76.

In 718 the coffin was carried out by the Sardinia to Pavia, by the Lombard king Liutprando.
Since then his remains have been kept in the Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d'oro.

Elisabetta D'Angheria, or