Christian Saints
St. Augustine of Hippo
(354-430)
St.
Augustine of Hippo, bishop and Doctor of the Church, the greatest theologian
of the Roman Catholic Church. Born in 354 at Tagaste (Algeria) of a pagan
father and a Christian mother, St. Monica, he was brought up as a Christian
but was not baptized. He studied at the University of Carthage to become
a lawyer, but then turned to philosophy. For nine years he was an adept
of Manichaeis. He moved to Rome to teach rhetoric, then to Milan, where
he met St. Ambrose and came under his influence.
Augustine described his long inner conflict in Confessions. Augustine
was converted and baptized by St. Ambrose himself in 386-7. He became a
priest in 391 and Bishop of Hippo in 395. He left voluminous writings which
have probably proved more influencial in the history of thought than any
Christian writer since St. Paul. His most famous works are Confessions,
De Trinitate and De Civitate Dei.
He died in 430 at Hippo having composed the De Civitate Dei (City of God) during the siege of the city by the Vandals.
St.Augustine is the patron saint of theologians and printers.
Feast day: August 28.
In fine art St. Augustine is often depicted in the company of a child
or angel with a shell; from the 15th century with a transfixed or burning
heart. The earliest surviving painting of him is in the Lateran library
(a 6th century fresco).
See:
Botticelli St. Augustine;
Coronation of the Virgin
with the Saints John the Evangelist, Augustine, Jerome and Eligius. (San
Marco altarpiece); St.
Augustine in the Cell.
Benozzo Gozzoli. Apsidal
Chapel of Sant'Agostino in San Gimignano, Italy.
Fra Filippo Lippi Virgin and
Child Surrounded by Angels with St. Frediano and St. Augustine (The Barbadori
Altarpiece), Vision of St. Augustine.
Masaccio St. Jerome and
St. Augustine.
Piero della Francesca. St. Augustine.
Luca Signorelli. SS.
Augustine, Catherine of Alexandria, and Anthony of Padua.
Simone Martini. The
Miracle of the Child Falling from the Balcony.
Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto. Saint
Augustine Healing the Lame.
The Miracle of the Child Falling from the Balcony. A miracle
performed by St. Augustine, when he swooped from heaven to catch the baby
before it landed on its head and restored him to the astonished neighbors.
Recommended reading:
The
Book of Saints: The Lives of the Saints According to the Liturgical Calendar
by George Angelini, Victor Hoagland (Editor). Regina Press, 1986.
Augustine
of Hippo: A Biography, Revised Edition with a New Epilogue
by Peter Robert Lamont Brown. University of California Press, 2000.
The
Confessions by Henry Chadwick (Translator), St. Augustine.
Oxford University Press, 1991.
The
City of God by Saint Augustine, Augustine, Thomas Merton (Illustrator).
Modern Library, 1994.
The
Cambridge Companion to Augustine by Eleonore Stump (Editor),
Norman Kretzmann (Editor). Cambridge University Press, 2001.
The
Trinity by Saint Augustine of Hippo, Edmund Hill (Translator).
New City Press, 1991.
The
Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church by Fr. Seraphim
Rose. Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1997.
