After his conversion, Augustine returned to North Africa to the town of Hippo, where he wished to live a simple monastic life in communion with God. However, like many other saints in Church history, God had planned a different path for Augustine. He was ordained a priest in 391 and, four years later, made bishop of Hippo. Even as the chief ecclesial leader in Hippo, Augustine continued to live a simple monastic life while he undertook the administrative and financial duties of the episcopacy. In one moment of exasperation, Augustine commented on the difficulties of being a bishop: “No one who has not been a bishop would believe what we are expected to do.”104 As bishop, Augustine arbitrated disputes among his flock and interfaced with the civil authorities. He devoted his time and energy to reforming the clergy of his diocese and exhorting his people to live the Faith authentically. He bemoaned the Christians who only attended the Sacrifice of the Mass on Christmas and Easter.105 He reminded his flock that attending Mass to please a patron, secure a wife, or attain physical healing were not proper motivations, and called them to attend Mass to praise God and to reform themselves, saying, “A convert will find many good Christians in the Church if he sets out to become one himself.”106
Augustine was a prolific writer whose works greatly influenced the development of doctrine and Christian spirituality. He was the Church’s unmatched thinker and theologian for eight hundred years, the “bridge between the old world (Roman) and the new world (Catholic).”107 Augustine’s two most famous works are Confessions and The City of God. His Confessions was written a decade after his conversion to the Faith, when he had been a priest for eight years. It is “a sort of autobiography in the form of a dialogue with God.”108 In this prose-poem, Augustine writes of the fundamental truth that “the soul that has lost God has lost its roots and therefore has lost itself.”109 True happiness is found not in oneself but in relationship with God. Only God fulfills the soul’s longing: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart finds no rest until it rests in you.”110 Even the soul that has wandered far from God can be made whole again by entering into a relationship with the loving God, as Augustine explained in a letter about his book: “See what I was in myself and by myself. I had destroyed myself, but he who made me remade me.”111 Augustine’s Confessions became the most popular and standard manual for Christian spirituality for the next thousand years.112
Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410 was met with cries of indignation directed at Christians and God. Many in the Empire argued that the city had been protected from harm when the pagan deities were worshiped. Now that they had been ignored in favor of the Christian God, the deities had withdrawn their protection, and the city was destroyed. Augustine recognized that argument as fallacious, and he wrote a rebuttal to ensure a proper interpretation of the calamity. His work, written over a decade, encompassed twenty-two books and is known as The City of God: Against the Pagans. The City is divided into two parts. The first is a defense of the Faith against the pagan claim that conversion was the reason for the Empire’s destruction. The second part is an explication of the two cities — the “City of Man,” founded on self-love, pride, ambition, greed, and other vices, and the “City of God,” founded on love of God, selflessness, humility, sacrifice, and obedience. These “cities” are distinct yet comingled in time, and each individual struggles as a citizen of both. Augustine’s work laid the foundation for a proper interpretation of human history. God is involved in history, and the Faith is the key to understanding the events that occur in the world. All events must be understood in light of the Gospel and God’s plan for humanity. History is the “drama of sin and redemption,” and a city’s destruction is not due to the withdrawal of the gods’ protection but to the freely willed choices of men loved by God.113
Augustine’s days were filled not only with writing but also with protecting his flock from the heretical teachings of three groups: the Manichaeans, the Donatists, and the Pelagians. Mani (216–276), a Persian raised in a Christian/Jewish sect, left the group in his early twenties to found his own movement. Mani’s Gnostic teachings embraced a dualist understanding of the world, with a belief that material things are evil and spiritual things are good. The core believers of Mani’s religion were the elect, who possessed the secret knowledge he shared with them. The elect were bound to live in accordance with Manichaean principles, including celibacy, vegetarianism, abstinence from alcohol, no land ownership, and refraining from picking or eating apples because of the fruit’s alleged role in original sin.114 The vast majority of Mani’s followers did not want to live the strict life of the elect, so they were known as “hearers.” The hearers obeyed Mani’s teaching of using contraception to prevent pregnancy and, if that failed, abortion, because the marital act, according to Manichaeism, could result in the imprisonment of a good spiritual soul in a bad material body. Additionally, the hearers followed a vegetarian diet and acted as the servants of the elect. This strict and radical life, along with the emphasis on possessing secret knowledge, fostered growth in membership — but the Manichaeans ran into trouble with the Roman authorities. The sect was seen as a dangerous foreign element by Emperor Diocletian, who issued an edict of suppression at the end of the third century. Augustine was well aware of Manichaean teaching and the danger it presented to the faithful because he had been a member of the group for a decade in his youth. He worked diligently to combat Manichaeism and protect his people from the nefarious cult.
The Donatists were an extremist group that had developed in North Africa in the early fourth century, after the Great Persecution. They developed as a result of the ongoing question concerning the lapsi. Donatists argued that the handing over of the sacred objects and the Scriptures during the Great Persecution was an unforgiveable mortal sin. Additionally, the Donatists believed that if a member of the lapsi was a cleric, he could not continue in ministry, because the sacraments celebrated by a lapsed priest were invalid due to his personal failings and unworthiness. Despite imperial and papal condemnation of their teachings, the group persisted and proved a difficult opponent for Augustine in Hippo. The Donatists thrived on being a small, constantly persecuted group. Adherents engaged in self-inflicted martyrdom by making themselves known to the authorities in order to be killed, and even practiced immolation and drowning. They despised Catholics and engaged in open warfare against them. Catholic travelers moving through Donatist territory were frequently ambushed and blinded by Donatists throwing a mixture of lime and vinegar into their eyes.115 When Donatists captured Catholic churches, they first used a disinfectant, the same used in public restrooms, to cleanse the space before utilizing it.116 They also smashed altars and threw away consecrated oils and the Eucharist because they believed the items to be profaned from the unworthiness of the Catholic minister.117 The situation was akin to a civil war. Hippo was split between Donatists and Catholics, “and each body treasured the memory of every single insult.”118 Augustine worked tirelessly to end the infighting and to bring the Donatists into communion with the Church. Augustine wrote books undermining the Donatists’ extremist views, which resulted in many conversions from the group.
Augustine also wrote against the teachings of the British monk Pelagius, a tall and corpulent man who Jerome described as being “weighed down with Scottish porridge.”119 Pelagius visited Rome sometime in the early fifth century and was disillusioned by the decadent lifestyle of Roman Christians. Pelagius wrote the book On Nature in 415. In it, he said that original sin was not communicated to the entire human race, but was only the personal sin of Adam. He advocated that Christ’s mission was not salvific, but only provided a good example for moral living. Pelagius also denied the operative power of grace. He believed man has the capacity, through his own will, to live a life of perfection and attain heaven — God’s grace is unnecessary. Pope Zosimus (r. 417–418) condemned Pelagianism in 418, which resulted in a famous phrase attributed to Augustine (although he probably never wrote the exact words): “Rome has spoken, the case is closed.”120 Augustine’s writings against Pelagianism were so effective that he is known as the “Doctor of Grace.”
Augustine devoted the last thirty-five years of his life to his flock in Hippo. He died as the