AUGUSTINE’S CHILDHOOD

Aurelius Augustinus was commonly known as "Saint Augustine of Hippo" and often simply known as
Augustine. Aurelius Augustinus was born on 13 November 354 A.D., at the small Numidian town of
Tagaste, not far from Hippo (respectively, modern Souk-Ahras and modern Annaba in Algeria. The town
was situated in a pleasant location on the broad and fertile altiplano of Numidia - 2,200 feet above sea
level. It was surrounded by fragrant woods in which Augustine went on long excursions hunting birds
and by vines and olive groves. It was rich in grains, fruits, and pasturage.

Augustine describes his life as a gift from God. In his autobiography, he said that as a boy, he was
endowed with the five senses, furnished with limbs, and having its proper proportions, implanted with
instincts necessary for the welfare and safety of him.

Furthermore, Augustine said that he did not remember the early part of his life, but he believed what
other people have told about him is true. From watching other babies, he concluded that he lived as
they do (Conf. 1.7).

When Augustine was a boy, he learned to disobey his parents and the master (teacher) of the school. He
said: “I was disobedient, not because I chose something better than they proposed to me, but simply
from the love of games” (Conf. 1.10). Augustine likes to win at sports because he likes to go to the stage
and be applauded by people. This curiosity came to his mind, because of what he has seen from the
grown-ups who enjoyed watching games.

Another instance in the life of Augustine when he was a young boy - a catechumen, he further said: “I
was blessed regularly from birth with the sign of the Cross and was seasoned with God’s salt by my
mother who placed her great hope in you, my God”. As a child, Augustine was suddenly ill with the
disorder of the stomach, and he was at the point of death. His mother and the mother Church wanted to
give him the baptism which ensures him for eternal salvation (Conf. 1.11).

THE FAMILY OF AUGUSTINE

Monica gave birth to Augustine in 354 when she was 23 years old. Monica instructed Augustine in
the Christian religion and taught him how to pray. As a child, blessed salt was placed on his tongue. He
thus formally became a catechumen, i.e., he was enrolled in the process of baptismal preparation. Once
while still of school age, he became dangerously ill. He desired baptism and his mother prepared
everything for the ceremony. Then suddenly he grew better, and his baptism was put off
(https://bit.ly/3eWEI0Q).Monica was born in Thagaste, where she received a Berber name reminiscent
of a pagan god. Although her hometown was under Donatist influence at the time, her parents trained
her in the Catholic faith, with the help of a particularly godly servant in their home. She married a man
named Patricius, who was unfaithful to her throughout their early years together. Despite his hot
temper and infidelity, Monica was a faithful wife and her husband became a Christian at the end of his
life (Conf. 9,9).

Monica won admiration for her noble character and outstanding virtues. She is forever revered in
Christian history. Augustine was not ignorant of her religion, for she had trained him in his childhood,
but it soon slipped from his memory when he went away to school. Augustine was not the only child. He
had a brother, Navigius, and one sister referred to in his letter to the nuns. Possidius also mentions her.
Though her name is not known, tradition gives it as Perpetua (Weiskotten, 1919).

Between the opposed extremes, a middle class had formed which was for the most part African in
origin but Roman by education and mentality and which by now was fully absorbed into the organization
of the empire. This was the class of the small landowners who took part in the running of civic affairs
and wanted their sons to pass through all the levels of instruction so that they might become
magistrates, rhetoricians, or lawyers. It was to this class that Augustine’s family belonged.

By comparison with other families of Tagaste, that of Alypius, for example, which was one of the
leading families of the town or that of Romanianus which was very wealthy, Augustine was rather poor.
That is in fact how Augustine himself thought of it. He says that his father was “a poor freedman from
Tagaste”, and speaks of himself as having been “born of poor parents” (Trape,1986).

The words should not be taken as what they mean nowadays. Poverty at that time did not exclude a
certain degree of comfort. Augustine’s parents had domestic servants and owned some land, they could
afford to send their son to school at Madauros, 20 miles away, and conceive the ambitious plan of
sending him to Carthage to complete his studies. But comfort did not mean wealth. The ambitious plan
would probably have never been carried out, despite the sacrifices made by the family, until a fellow
citizen, Romanianus, relative of Alypius and one of those who was called rich, had come to Augustine’s
aid.

Augustine’s family, then, was not wealthy, but it was certainly distinguished and respected. His
father, Patricius, was a member of the municipal council; a rough, sensual, and hot-tempered man gave
to occasional outbursts of anger, but generally easy-going (Hernandez, 1993).

Furthermore, Patricius seems to have paid little attention to Augustine’s well-being and training. As
Augustine mentions in his confessions that his family made no effort to save him from the fall of being a
lustful person. Their concern only was he should learn how to make a good speech and how to persuade
others by his words (cf. Conf. II.2).

THE LANGUAGE OF AUGUSTINE

The family of Augustine was probably of African origin but had become Romanized. In Patricius’
house all, including the servants, spoke Latin and only Latin. In any case, before learning Latin in school
Augustine had already learned it at home, “by observing others, without being frightened into it or
forced by the rod, amid the flattering of my nurses, and the jests of such as smiled upon me, and the
mirth of those who played with me.” He learned it because he felt a desire and need to express his
thoughts (Trape, p.18). Moreover, he said: “I loved Latin, not the elementary lessons but those which I
studied later under teachers of literature” (Conf.1.13).

Latin was the first language in which Augustine expressed himself and the only one he mastered
fully. Augustine had but a limited and general knowledge of Punic that did not allow him to make use of
it. While the Greek language was foreign to Augustine and he understood not a single word of it, he was
constantly subjected to violent threats and cruel punishment to make him learn the language. He
further said that the Greek language that he learned as a child was so distasteful and he cannot
understand it (Conf. 1.13). Moreover, Augustine emphasizes that persons learn in a spirit of curiosity
than under fear and compulsion (Conf. 1.14).

He learned Greek unwillingly either because of his natural inclination was more to poetry rather
than drier studies that elicited no feelings in him, or because the current methods of instruction were
based on “painful forms of punishments”. He never became really at home with Greek (Hojilla, 2020).
When it came to Latin, Augustine was a master of all its riches of content and form, all its secrets, all its
resources. He spoke it, indeed with a typically African accent that caused the Italians to make fun of him.
He displayed stylistic peculiarities proper to a writer of the late Imperial age who was both an African
and a Pastor of souls. He was also a consummate artist in language, with the ability to make it express
every nuance of thought and every variety of styles (Hojilla, 2020). Accordingly, he learned how to speak
and write, read, and count. Augustine affirmed that his studies taught him many useful words, but for
him to study something that matters and as a boy, this must be the course to follow (Conf. 1.15).

THE CULTURE OF AUGUSTINE

The period of Saint Augustine’s time was known as the "decline of the Roman Empire". This period
was the period of social, political, and theological transformation. In this period most of the Roman
pagan had adopted Christianity, although paganism had not altogether ended. "Nevertheless, it was
during this period that the Roman state adopted Christianity as the official state religion",(Brief Life of
Augustine, Pdf)it was said that Tagaste at that time was securely Catholic by 354 when Augustine was
born (Wills, 1999).

Numidia was part of the Roman Empire, whose signs were all around Augustine as he was growing
up—the straight stone rooted roads, the striding aqueducts, the people's amphitheaters. Along its
northern rim, the Empire was troubled by "barbarians" and by theological wars (the high theology and
low skullduggery of fights over Arianism). But this southern edge of the Empire was secure.

Known as Rome's granary, Numidia was separated from desert nomads by a long ditch (the Fossa)
that defined Rome's jurisdiction as clearly as did Hadrian's Wall in the Empire's far North. Augustine
would have assumed, like his parents, that the Roman order was eternal. Even as he had trouble
accepting the collapse of the Roman political order, he considered it providential (Wills, 1999).

THE ADOLESCENT YEAR OF AUGUSTINE AND HIS DOWNFALL (Year of Idleness) AND HIS SAVING
MOMENTS
Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. (cf. Romans 5:20b).

Augustine spent one year idly because the family was unable to afford the expenses of higher
education. The atmosphere in which Augustine passed his childhood was Christian, but not completely
so. Although paganism was in irreversible decline, it was still alive: here and there, it was even vigorous
and militant. This was the case at Madaura where Augustine was a student from his eleventh to his
fifteenth year.
 When Augustine entered his adolescence, his sins became more serious. Consequently, when
Augustine reflected the sins committed he realized and said “O God, the same heart on which you took
pity when it was in the depths of the abyss. Let my heart prompt me to do wrong for no purpose, and
why it was only my own love of mischief that made me do it. The evil in me was foul, but I loved it. I
loved my perdition and my own faults, not the things for which I committed wrong, but the wrong itself.
My soul was vicious and broke away from your safekeeping to seek its own destruction, looking for no
profit in disgrace but only for disgrace itself” (Conf. II. 4).

The main ones were these: the theft of pears from a neighbor’s orchard, sin against chastity, a
passionate liking for shows, and a quasi-connubial union with a young woman of Carthage. He had
talents, ambitions, and above all, dreams of happiness and glory. And this happiness was equated with
the magic word LOVE. Augustine, as he mentioned in his book, the Confessions, had not yet fallen in
love, but he began to look around for some object of his love since he badly wanted to love something.
Though he abhorred the licentious morals of some fellow students, soon the pagan influence, his
friends, and his highly emotional nature and absence from home, had led Augustine to follow the
custom of the time and to take a mistress. Augustine claimed: “In those years, I lived with a woman, not
my lawful wedded wife; she was one who had come my way because of my wandering desires ... But she
was the only one and I was faithful to her”. That union bore its fruit. “Living with her, I found out by my
own experience, the difference between the restraint of the marriage-covenant, contracted for having
children, and the main bargain of lustful love, where if children come, they come unwanted, though, if
they come, we cannot help but love them”. From this union, a son was born in 372, whom Augustine
calls the “son of my sin” – Adeodatus – whose name literally means “God-given”. His relation with that
woman lasted for fifteen years, during which he kept her as his faithful companion.Augustine had also
watched over the education and character of his son. No one would ever know as Augustine hid all her
traces and name in his famous book, The Confessions. It was an act of responsibility and a compromise
born of the tug of passion and a moral sense of honor. This sense of honor caused Augustine to remain
faithful to the woman, even though she was not his wife.

Adeodatus was the son of Augustine by a woman he met in Carthage around 371, his unnamed
concubine to whom he was faithful for about fifteen years. Born in Carthage in 372 (Conf. 4.2.2),
Adeodatus (“God-given”, perhaps a common name in North Africa) came with his parents to Italy and
participated in the conversation at Cassiciacum. His abilities were a source of great satisfaction to
Augustine (Conf. 9.6.14). For Augustine, Adeodatus means “the son of my sin”. In Milan, he was
baptized by Ambrose in 387, at the same time as Adeodatus and Alypius. Augustine’s De Magistro (The
Teacher, 398) is proposed as the record of a conversation between Augustine and his son, Adeodatus.
When his mother returned to Africa, he remained with Augustine (Conf. 6.15.25) and was present later
when Monica died at Ostia (Conf. 9.12.29-31). Adeodatus then returned to Tagaste with Augustine,
continued his education, but died there at around 389 (Conf. 9.6.14).
Where and when did Augustine born?
What are the languages that Augustine used?
What are the significant experiences of Augustine in his growing years?
How did his family influence him?
How would you describe the cultural background of Augustine?
Can you relate with Augustine’s experience? In what way?