The Age of St. Augustine

Catalog description

Augustine of Hippo lived from 354 until 430 CE. This was a period of enormous political and social change, and also a period of profound intellectual discovery. Growing up in the Roman provinces of North Africa, Augustine was formed by late Roman culture and education, and absorbed and loved the greatest examples of classical Latin poetry and prose. In his youth he was a professional rhetorician, a teacher as well as a successful orator. Yet after his conversion to Christianity at the age of 31, he renounced much of his early formation, at least in name. He became a preacher and a priest, a bishop, an expositor of Christian thought, and a fierce polemicist. But he was never able to leave behind his early classical formation; as an adult he looks back on his childhood, poignantly remembering how he “wept for Dido” when he read the Aeneid at school. His life embodies the contradictions of the age. Augustine’s life and his writings give us a keen perspective on that tumultuous, fractured period of late Roman antiquity, when the empire was disintegrating through internal divisions and external threats. Central readings of our course will be Augustine’s Confessions and his City of God. We will also read works by his contemporaries, including philosophers, rhetoricians, and religious adversaries. We will explore his views on such issues as empire, slavery, childhood, sex and sexuality, Jews and Judaism, pedagogy, and free will. Assignments will involve regular posting of questions and ideas for discussion, one oral research presentation, and one final longer paper.