Thinkers Timeline

Augustine of Hippo was a Christian bishop, theologian, and writer in late Roman North Africa. He is one of the most influential Christian thinkers in history. His ideas shaped Western Christianity for over 1,500 years and continue to do so. He was born in 354 CE in Thagaste, in what is now Algeria. He died in 430 CE in Hippo Regius, a North African city now also in Algeria. He came from a mixed religious household. His father Patricius was a Roman pagan official who converted to Christianity only on his deathbed. His mother Monica was a devout Christian who pushed for her son's conversion for years. Augustine was a clever boy. He studied rhetoric in Carthage, the major North African city. He moved to Rome and then to Milan as a teacher of rhetoric. He took a long-term partner who is unnamed in his writings. They had a son together. He sent her away when his mother arranged a more socially advantageous marriage that he never made. As a young man he was attracted to Manichaeism, a religion that mixed Christian, Persian, and Buddhist elements. He spent nine years as a Manichaean. He found its answers eventually unsatisfying. In Milan, under the influence of Bishop Ambrose and his own reading of Plato and the New Testament, he converted to Christianity in 386. He was 31. His mother died shortly after, having seen what she had wanted. He returned to North Africa. He became a priest in 391, then bishop of Hippo in 395. He served as bishop for 35 years. He wrote constantly. His Confessions (around 400 CE) is one of the first major spiritual autobiographies. His City of God (begun 413) is a vast work of theology and political thought. He died as Vandal armies were besieging his city.