Feast of St. Augustine

Born in 354 in Tagaste, today Souk Ahras in Algeria, he became a professor of grammar and rhetoric after studying in Carthage. For a time, he followed the Manichaean sect and lived in moral disorder.

He became a professor in Rome and Milan, where he converted, thanks to the prayers of his mother, Saint Monica. The bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose, whose homilies he assiduously followed, baptized him on the night of Easter.

Baptized at thirty-three years old, he became a priest five years later, then in 395 Bishop of Hippo, today Annaba, Algeria. He fought the Donatist heresy, then the Manicheans and Pelagians, all while giving the example of a holy life, modest, and edifying.

His writings—The Confessions (397), On the Trinity (416), The City of God (426)—his immense knowledge, his sermons, and his treatises on the Holy Scriptures, on free will, grace, or the true religion, earn him universal fame. He died on August 28, 430 in Hippo, then besieged by the Vandals, after thirty-six years as a bishop.

His body rests in Pavia, Italy, in the basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro (St. Peter in the Golden Sky), since Liutprand, the king of the Lombards, had it installed there around 720. Doctor of grace, Saint Augustine was canonized by Pope Boniface VIII.

Ideas for further reading : 

Saint Augustine – The City of God 

Saint Augustine – The Confessions