I have defeated you, Augustine

[lunabee34]

Confessions by Augustine of Hippo

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a really excellent, very readable translation.

I really enjoy the first 2/3 that deal with Augustine's autobiography. Love the glimpses of what life in the early Roman empire was like. Love reading about his personal struggles and his relationship with his mother and his friends.

The final 1/3 is a slog for me. It's entirely theological/philosophical musing + spiritual exegesis, and I find it too complex to truly enjoy. I do find fascinating the issues with which the early Church wrestled like how do we define time and eternity?, how do we interpret the creation story in Genesis?, what kind of relationship should we have to the body (is it okay to eat food because it tastes good or do we just eat food to stay alive)?

I wish the intro told me more about his life and the lives that intersect with his. I suspect that what I really want is to read a good biography of Augustine.



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Does anybody know anything about the woman with whom Augustine had his son? Like, maybe her name? LOL And what happened to her after he split with her?

Comments

[kore]

NOPE nobody knows her name as far as I know. There have been several novels from her POV, most of them not that good.

I really love Augustine for his psychological insights and beautiful style, but his dogmatic views....eeeeeegh. He's fascinating to me.

[lunabee34]

Well, durn. Now I want to knowwwwwwwww!

Augustine is really fascinating. I think I'm going to try to find a readable bio.

[lyr]

Does anybody know anything about the woman with whom Augustine had his son? Like, maybe her name? LOL And what happened to her after he split with her?

So far as I know, history has no record of her name. But we do know she was from Carthage, that she stayed 15 years with Augustine, and that he dumped her at the behest of his mother for an arranged marriage to an underage heiress. As some point during the two years of waiting for the heiress to turn 12 so she could marry, something - most probably involving advice from Alypius of Thagaste - went wrong. Whatever it was, Augustine decided to become a priest and the unnamed lover left her son with his father and went back home to Carthage to live out her days in penance at a monastery.

[lunabee34]

I have always felt so sorry for her. Augustine makes it sound like they genuinely loved each other even though she was "unsuitable" (lower class and uneducated); I wonder if she hated him for casting him off.

We'll never know!!!!!!!!

[duskpeterson]

A story for you that makes it all clear.

[lunabee34]

I love that story! I read it when it was posted, but I had forgotten all about it.

Thank you for linking me.

I love the part where he's all, 'They're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective!' LOL

[duskpeterson]

:)