81 St. Augustine Of Hippo Facts To Learn About The Philosopher

St. Augustine, also known as Saint Augustine of Hippo, was born on November 13, 354, Tagaste, Numidia (now known as Souk Ahras, Algeria).

His Latin name is Aurelius Augustinus. The feast day for St. Augustine is August 28, the day on which he died.

He died in 430 AD when he was still designated as the bishop of Hippo. After St. Paul, St. Augustine took charge of the church and remained the bishop between 396-430 AD, the year he died.

He was amongst the highly notable Christian thinkers who transformed classical thought into different teachings of Christian culture.

This decision had a lasting influence as it created a thought process of great power.

His influence till now is such that he is still considered the church's doctor in Roman Catholic culture, for he laid the foundation of the present-day Christian thought process. He was a philosopher, and there are several facts about his holy life dedicated to the Roman Catholic faith under western Christianity.

After reading about the life of Saint Augustine, also check Aristotle facts and St Augustine lighthouse facts.

Facts About St Augustine Of Hippo

 St. Augustine was the son of St. Monica, a Christian and a pagan father who converted into a Christian on his deathbed. He had little or no belief in religion and was more into entertainment and high living.

He attended school in Madaura and Carthage, where he learned grammar and rhetoric. For a long period of his life, St. Augustine rejected Christianity because he disagreed with the writing style of the Bible and the crudeness of its doctrine.

Instead, he started taking lessons of Manichaeism, a mixture of different communities that include Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Gnosticism. He followed the teachings of the Persian prophet Mani for over nine years. According to Manichaeism, humanity was a blend of good and evil.

He returned to his hometown, where he opened a school and left to teach rhetoric in Carthage. Later in 383 AD, he became dissatisfied with Manichaeism also.

Then he began to study the writings of Plato and Plotinus, studying which he developed an interest in Neo-Platonism that affirmed his beliefs in Christian theology.

His mother prayed for his conversion into Christianity, but he moved to Milan as a professor of rhetoric.

He had a son with a concubine whom he loved but did not marry for social and political reasons. The guilt made him struggle with himself, and he began reading a book written by St. Paul, whose verse asked people to believe in Christ and give away the worldly pleasures of lust and drunkenness.

The readings made St. Augustine enlightened, and eventually, at the age of 32, he returned to Christianity with profound studies and understandings. In 387 AD, he was baptized and traveled to Hippo. Here he was ordained as a priest and in 385 AD was designated as a bishop.

St. Augustine's Timeline

St. Augustine lived from 354 AD to 430 AD and was regarded as the patron saint of brewers, printers, and theologians.

He was born in Thagaste in 354 AD. He fell in love with a lower caste girl in 371 AD, with whom he could not marry due to class distinctions.

He had a son with her named Adeodatus in 372 AD. In 373 AD, he read Cicero's Hotensius and converted to a high-life philosophy.

He came back home in 374 AD, and in 376 AD, when he returned to Carthage, he started a school there. In 384 AD, he moved to Milan, where he was given a professorship, and he took up the study of Neoplatonists.

In 386 AD, he renounced his past life of carnal sins and had a burning heart for the monastic lifestyle. Later in 387 AD, his mother died, and he became a servant of God.

He was forced to get ordained when he visited Hippo in 391 AD. He was ordained as a priest and was designated as a Bishop, and in 430 AD, St. Augustine died after suffering from fever for days.

St. Augustine's Philosophy

 St. Augustine's works philosophically justified Christianity and the Catholic church. His belief in Christianity became very strong, and he believed that only Christianity was the real truth, and if one has no faith in it, that person could never attain truth, and his life would remain meaningless.

He put forth the ideas of Plotinus and Neo-Platonic philosophy, and he thought that while faith is elementary, reason helps support and clarify it further.

According to his philosophy, reason is the capacity of a human that comprehend truth and back it up with logic. He takes on a subjective view of time and always believed that time is not something that exists but something that a human mind believes in firmly.

He was the Bishop of Hippo in Numidia (Roman Province of Africa), which was a part of the Roman Empire. St. Augustine converted to Christianity along with his son in the year 387 AD. This decision was made when Augustine finally became convinced that Christianity was the one true religion.

St. Augustine's Contribution To Christianity

After the names of Lord Jesus Christ and St. Paul, St. Augustine's name is considered very influential in the entire history of Christianity.

He was a well-known philosopher who rendered a classical touch to the Catholic church's thought process and put an interesting take to orthodox thinking until the time of the Protestant Reformation. His contribution to Christianity cannot be summarized.

He created a powerful theological system of lasting influence and helped lay the foundation for much of medieval and modern Christian thought. He was also influenced and informed by the Greek and Latin philosophical traditions that made him so theological and philosophical.

When he explains Christianity and makes people believe in it, he employs the tools and framework required to introspect these ideological traditions.

He was an impactful figure in Christian history as he set the foundation for the preparation and acknowledgment of the original sin doctrine. He further helped determine the course of ethics in the Christian faith.

Saint Augustine wrote several writings that still stand as a bulwark of orthodoxy in the church. These writings include- 'Confessions,' which gives a personal account of his earlier life, 'The City of God', which consists of 22 whole books he wrote to restore people's faith in Christianity just like he did.

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