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Augustine

Specialty Definition: Augustine

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Specialty Definition: Augustine

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Augustine is the name of two important Saints:

• Augustine of Hippo (384-430) -- philosopher and theologian, author of The City of God, Confessions
• Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604) -- first Archbishop of Canterbury

This is a disambiguation page; that is, one that just points to other pages that might otherwise have the same name. If you followed a link here, you might want to go back and fix that link to point to the appropriate specific page.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Augustine."

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Augustine of Canterbury

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Augustine of Canterbury (birth unknown, died May 26, 604 (traditional) or 605 (Thorn)) was the first Archbishop of Canterbury, sent to Ethelbert of Kent, Bretwalda of England by Pope Gregory the Great in 597. He was accompanied by Laurence of Canterbury, the second archbishop.

In 596, Augustine was praepositus (prior) of the monastery of Saint Andrew, founded by Pope Gregory I, and was sent by Gregory at the head of forty monks to preach to the Anglo-Saxons. They lost heart on the way and Augustine went back to Rome from Provence and asked that the mission be given up. The pope, however, commanded and encouraged them to proceed, and they landed on the Island of Thanet in the spring of 597.

Ethelbert's wife Bertha, daughter of Charibert, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks, had brought a chaplain with her (Liudhard) and either built a church or restored a church in Canterbury from Roman times and dedicated it to St. Martin of Tours, a major patronal saint for the Merovingian royal family. Ethelbert himself was a pagan, but allowed his wife to worship God her own way. Probably under influence of his wife, Ethelbert asked Pope Gregory I to send missionaries.

Gregory sent out a mission in 596, led by Augustine, who was praepositus (prior) of the monastery of Saint Andrew in Rome, founded by Gregory. They lost heart on the way and Augustine went back to Rome from Provence and asked that the mission be given up. The pope, however, commanded and encouraged them to proceed, and they landed on the Island of Thanet in the spring of 597.

Ethelbert permitted the missionaries to settle and preach in his town of Canterbury and before the end of the year he was converted and Augustine was consecrated bishop at Arles. At Christmas 10,000 of the king's subjects were baptized.

Augustine sent a report of his success to Gregory with certain questions concerning his work. In 601 Mellitus, Justus and others brought the pope's replies, with the pallium for Augustine and a present of sacred vessels, vestments, relics, books, and the like. Gregory directed the new archbishop to ordain as soon as possible twelve suffragan bishops and to send a bishop to York, who should also have twelve suffragans,- a plan which was not carried out, nor was the primatial see established at London as Gregory intended. Augustine consecrated Mellitus bishop of London and Justus bishop of Rochester.

More practicable were the pope's mandates concerning heathen temples and usages: the former were to be consecrated to Christian service and the latter, so far as possible, to be transformed into dedication ceremonies or feasts of martyrs, since "he who would climb to a lofty height must go up by steps, not leaps" (letter of Gregory to Mellitus, in Bede, i, 30).

Augustine reconsecrated and rebuilt an old church at Canterbury as his cathedral and founded a monastery in connection with it. He also restored a church and founded the monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul outside the walls.

His attempts to effect a union with the old British Church in Wales failed.

Part of the material on this page is adapted from the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religion

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Augustine of Canterbury."

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Augustine of Hippo

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

St. Augustine of Hippo, born A.D. 354, Tagaste; died August 28, 430, Hippo Regius (modern Bone, now Annaba, Algeria).

Life

Augustine was raised in Roman north Africa, educated in Carthage and employed as a professor of rhetoric in Milan by 383. He followed the Manichaean religion in his student days, and was converted to Christianity by the preaching and example of Ambrose of Milan. He was baptized at Easter in 387, and returned to north Africa and created an monastic foundation at Tagaste for himself and a group of friends. In 391 he was ordained a priest in Hippo. He became a famous preacher (more than 350 preserved sermons are believed to be authentic), and noted for combatting the Manichaean heresy.

In 396 he was made coadjutor bishop of Hippo (assistant with the right of succession on the death of the current bishop), and remained as bishop in Hippo until his death in 430. He left his monastery, but continued to lead a monastic life in the episcopal residence. He left a Rule (Latin, Regula) for his monastery that has led him to be designated the "patron saint of Regular Clergy," that is parish clergy who live by a monastic rule.

Augustine died in 430 during the siege of Hippo by the Vandals. He is said to have encouraged its citzens to resist the attacks, primarily on the grounds that the Vandals adhered to Arian Christianity, which Augustine regarded as heretical.

Writings

• On Christian Doctrine, 397-426
• Confessions, 397-398
• City of God, begun c. 413, finished 426.
• On the Trinity, 400-416.
• Enchiridion

Augustine was a prolific author in several genres - theological treatises, sermons, scripture commentaries, and autobiography. His Confessions is usually accorded the position of the first autobiography; Augustine moves from his conception to his current (at about the age of fifty) relationship with God, and ends with a long excursus on the book of Genesis in which he demonstrates how to interpret scripture. The psychological awareness and self-revelation of the work still impresses readers.

At the end of his life (426-428?) Augustine revisited his previous works in chronological order and suggested what he would have said differently in a work titled the Retractions, which gives us a remarkable picture of the development of a writer and his final thoughts.

Augustine and the Jews

Augustine wrote in Book 18, Chapter 46, of The City of God, "The Jews who slew Him, and would not believe in Him, because it behoved Him to die and rise again, were yet more miserably wasted by the Romans, and utterly rooted out from their kingdom, where aliens had already ruled over them, and were dispersed through the lands (so that indeed there is no place where they are not), and are thus by their own Scriptures a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ." [1]

Augustine deemed this scattering important because he believed that it was a fulfillment of certain prophecies, thus proving that Jesus was the Messiah. This is because Augustine believed that the Jews who were dispersed were the enemies of the Christian Church. He also quotes part of the same prophecy that says "Slay them not, lest they should at last forget Thy law". Some people have used Augustine's words to attack Jews, while others have used them to attack Christians. See Christianity and anti-Semitism.

Influence as a Theologian and Thinker

Augustine remains a central figure, both within Christianity and in the history of Western thought. Himself much influenced by Platonism and neo-Platonism, particularly by Plotinus, Augustine was important to the "baptism" of Greek thought and its entrance into the Christian, and subsequently the European intellectual tradition. Also important was his early and influential writing on the human will, a central topic in ethics, and one which became a focus for later philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. It is largely due to Augustine's influence that Western Christianity subscribes to the doctrine of original sin, and the Catholic Church holds that baptisms and ordinations done outside of the Catholic Church can be valid (the Catholic Church recognizes ordinations done in Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, but not in Protestant churches, and recognizes baptisms dones in nearly all Christian churches). Catholic theologians generally subscribe to Augustine's belief that God exists outside of time in the "eternal present"; time being a part of the created universe.

St. Thomas Aquinas took much from Augustine while creating his own unique synthesis of Greek and Christian thought. Two later theologians who claimed special influence from Augustine were John Calvin and Cornelius Jansen. Calvinism developed as a part of Reformation theology, while Jansenism was a movement inside the Catholic Church; some Jansenists went into schism and formed their own church.

Augustine was canonized by popular recognition and recognized as a Doctor of the Church [when and by which pope?]. His feast day is August 28, the day on which he is thought to have died. He is considered the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, sore eyes, and a number of cities and dioceses.

See also:

• Predestination
• Free will
• Flat earth
• In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas

External links

• On Christian Doctrine, Confessions, and City of God are available freely at http://www.ccel.org/a/augustine/
• Other writings are available freely at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/

INDEX

1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern

5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Images: Digital Art

9. Quotations: Familiar 10. Quotations: Non-fiction 11. Quotations: Speeches 12. Usage Frequency

13. Names: Frequency 14. Names: Derived from 15. Expressions 16. Expressions: Internet

17. Translations: Modern 18. Translations: Ancient 19. Derivations 20. Anagrams

21. Bibliography

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.