Chapter 21 - Augustine. Biographical introduction: Christianity and philosophy

Summary

St Augustine's life spanned almost eighty years of a period during which the ‘decline of the Roman Empire’ passed through its most dramatic, if not its most decisive, phase. Born into the Christian Empire of Constantine's successors, his youth saw the brief pagan reaction under Julian the Apostate, followed by the return to Christianity and the ever closer linking of the Empire to Christianity under the Emperors Gratian and Theodosius I. During the latter part of his life Roman paganism, which had rallied its forces during the last decade of the fourth century, was rapidly becoming a relic of the past, though it remained a force to be reckoned with. He witnessed not only an important phase in the Christianization of the ancient world; he also lived through some of its gravest military and political upheavals: the military disaster of Adrianople (378), the division of the Empire after Theodosius, the irruption of Vandals, Sueves and other barbarians into the western provinces of the Empire (406), the increasing barbarization of the Roman armies and of the imperial court, the sacking of the City of Rome by the Visigoths (410). These are some of the landmarks. The Vandal invaders of his own North Africa had just reached his episcopal city of Hippo as he lay on his deathbed. In an important sense his life may be said to coincide with the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Augustine belonged to both worlds, in many ways, and not least intellectually. He received the kind of education which was typical of late antiquity, characterized by a predominantly literary or rhetorical outlook.