Augustine, a Latin church father, is one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity. He “established anew the ancient faith” (conditor antiquae rursum fidei), according to his contemporary, Jerome. In his early years he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism and afterwards by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus, but after his conversion and baptism (387), he developed his own approach to philosophy and theology accommodating a variety of methods and different perspectives. He believed that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom and framed the concepts of original sin and just war. When the Roman Empire in the West was starting to disintegrate, Augustine developed the concept of the Church as a spiritual City of God (in a book of the same name) distinct from the material Earthly City. His thought profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. Augustine’s City of God was closely identified with the church, and was the community which worshiped God.

Augustine was born in the city of Thagaste, the present day Souk Ahras, Algeria, to a pagan father named Patricius and a Catholic mother named Monica. He was educated in North Africa and resisted his mother’s pleas to become Christian. Living as a pagan intellectual, he took a concubine, with whom he had a son, Adeodatus, and became a Manichean. Later he converted to Catholicism, became a bishop, and opposed heresies, such as the belief that people can have the ability to choose to be good to such a degree as to merit salvation without divine aid (Pelagianism).

1. A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.

2. Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

3. Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

4. Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.

5. Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.

6. Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

7. If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times.

8. In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?

9. Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.