AUGUSTINE THE AFRICAN

Caught between two continents.

St. Augustine’s influence on Western philosophy in general and Christian theology in particular can hardly be overstated, yet little has been made of his North African heritage—an oversight that Conybeare, a professor at Bryn Mawr college, has set out to redress. Aurelius Augustinus was born in 354 C.E. in Thagaste (present-day Algeria), a city founded by indigenous Amazigh (Berber) peoples, of which Augustine was one, and at the same time part of the larger Roman Empire. This duality, Conybeare contends, characterized Augustine’s life and work. He grew up idolizing Roman culture, but when, at 28, he traveled to Rome to teach rhetoric, he felt “profoundly out of place,” especially when his students “sneered at his African accent.” Still, Augustine was appointed master of rhetoric in Milan, where he gave speeches in praise of the Roman emperor. While there, Augustine converted to Christianity, but he grew homesick for Africa, so he returned and was ordained as bishop of Hippo, where the contradictions piled up. He found himself stuck between two versions of Christianity: the Roman church in Africa and the African church. Augustine fought against the African church on behalf of the Romans, yet fought against the Roman view of original sin after a Roman deacon attacked Augustine’s African heritage. He defended local African languages, and at the same time only spoke Latin himself. Within these contradictions Augustine forged his doctrines of grace and free will and wrote masterful books, including Confessions and City of God. “Appropriated for a Western version of Christianity based in Europe,” Conybeare writes, these works “are read as if it doesn’t matter where they were written.” History buffs and Augustine scholars will be delighted by the level of detail here and impressed by Conybeare’s own translations of the Latin sources, while casual readers may find themselves lost in the weeds.

A scholarly biography that places Augustine’s ambivalence toward Africa at the center of his and Christianity’s story.