Augustine Timeline and Summary

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Augustine Timeline and Summary

  • Augustine is born in Thagaste in 354 AD. His father Patricius is a pagan and his mother Monica is a Christian. He has a happy infancy but he can't remember it.
  • As a teenager Augustine discovers sex. He discovers it over and over again, in fact.
  • Augustine is sent to Carthage to study when he is seventeen. It's kind of like he went off to college.
  • He falls in with some bad types in Carthage, the Manichees.
  • Augustine returns to Thagaste and becomes a teacher of rhetoric and literature. But he eventually moves back to Carthage.
  • Augustine decides to go to Rome when he is twenty-nine because he is sick of Carthage. Around this time, he breaks up with the Manichees.
  • Not too long after arriving in Rome, he goes to Milan and meets Ambrose.
  • Augustine's mother joins him in Italy because she just can't be away from her baby boy. Aww.
  • Augustine starts to learn how to read the Scriptures. He thinks they should come packaged with a label that reads, Warning: The Scriptures may induce inner conflicts.
  • After a lot of personal turmoil, Augustine finally decides to convert to Christianity. He does this basically because a voice in a garden told him to pick up a book and read it.
  • Augustine and Co. are baptized and decide to go back to Africa. On the journey, Augustine's mom, Monica, dies. Her death is the last autobiographical event in the Confessions.