Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Figures

Augustine of Hippo

Also Known As Hippo
Saints

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Bishop of Hippo (354-430) and the most influential of the Latin Church Fathers, whose Confessions and City of God shaped Western theology for a thousand years. A convert from a worldly youth and Manichaeism, he formulated enduring doctrines of grace, original sin, and the just war. He is a Doctor of the Church and patron of theologians.

Facts
Life
Lifespan or Floruit
354 to 430 CE 1
Office Held
Consecrated coadjutor bishop of Hippo Regius around 395 and sole bishop the following year, a see he held until his death during the Vandal siege of the city in 430. 1
Place of Activity
Carthage, Rome, Milan and Hippo Regius, where he was bishop 1
Manner of Death
Died of natural causes 1
Died at Hippo in 430, during the Vandal siege of the city
Position Profile
Key Text
The Confessions, his autobiographical account of his conversion from Manichaeism and a worldly youth, is his best known work. 1
Publications
Notable Publication
His Confessions, composed around 397 to 400, is counted among the first true autobiographies in Western literature, and his City of God, written over the following decade after the sack of Rome in 410, argues that the eternal city of God stands apart from the fortunes of any earthly empire. 1
Identity
Also Known As
Augustine 1
Gender
Male 1
Attestation
Historicity
Historically attested 1
Canonization
Pre-Congregation: venerated before any formal process existed 1Tradition: Christianity
Origins
Place of Origin
Thagaste in Numidia, present-day Souk Ahras in Algeria 1
Learn More
The Interior Life, and the Invention of a Genre

Augustine wrote his other great work, The City of God, in direct response to a historical shock: the sack of Rome by Alaric's Visigoths in 410, an event that let pagan critics argue Rome's abandonment of its old gods for Christianity had brought divine punishment. Augustine's answer, composed over more than a decade, reframes history itself around two intermingled cities, the earthly city bound to temporal power and self-love, and the City of God bound to eternal truth and love of God, arguing that Rome's fate was never the real measure of Christian hope in the first place. The work became a foundational text for later Christian political theology, read for centuries as authority on the proper relationship between church and state.

Augustine also fought a long theological battle against the British monk Pelagius, who taught that humans could achieve moral perfection and salvation through their own effort and free will alone, without dependence on divine grace. Augustine's opposing doctrine, that grace is necessary and prior to any good human act because original sin has left the will itself damaged, was affirmed by church councils and shaped mainstream Western Christian theology, including the later Reformation's own arguments about grace, far more decisively than Pelagius's position, which was condemned as heresy. Augustine died in 430 as Hippo itself lay under siege by the Vandals, the Roman world he had defended in writing collapsing around him in fact.

Grace, the Two Cities, and a Contested Legacy

Augustine's systematic thought grew largely out of controversy. Against the Pelagians he articulated the doctrine of original sin and the necessity of unmerited grace, arguing that the will, wounded by the Fall, cannot turn to God on its own, a position that would later divide Catholics and Protestants, both of whom claim him.

Against the Donatists he defended the catholicity of the Church and, more troublingly, the coercion of dissenters, a text later cited to justify religious compulsion. His City of God, written as Rome fell to the Goths, distinguished the earthly city from the city of God and gave medieval Christendom its philosophy of history. The Reformation's appeal to Augustine on grace, and Catholicism's on the Church and sacraments, made him the rare figure invoked as founder by traditions that anathematize one another, the clearest measure of how completely he framed the questions that followed him.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Ambrose's preaching on scripture in Milan removed the intellectual objections that had kept Augustine from the Nicene faith, and Ambrose baptized him at the Easter vigil of 387.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

This source names Augustine of Hippo directly: "A Wikipedia article on Augustine of Hippo, the bishop and theologian whose Confessions and City of God shaped Western Christian thought."

Carthage, Cities

Augustine of Hippo studied rhetoric in Carthage as a young man before his conversion.

Donatism, Doctrines

This source names Augustine of Hippo directly: "St. Augustine, founded by Spanish Catholics in 1565, is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States and its mission church predates Jamestown and Plymouth..."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Augustine of Hippo directly: "of Saint Anthony flanked by Saints Augustine and Jerome, itself flanked by painted panels of Saint Anthony's temptation by demons and his meeting with Saint Paul in the desert."

Source The Isenheim Altarpiece (Musee Unterlinden Official Page)Musee Unterlinden curatorial staffthe holders' own account
Jerome, Figures

Corresponded for years with Augustine of Hippo over Jerome's Hebrew-based translation method and their reading of Galatians 2; the exchange was never fully resolved between them.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Augustine of Hippo was a Manichaean Hearer for nine years before his conversion, and afterwards wrote the most effective refutations the religion faced in the Latin west.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

This source names Augustine of Hippo directly: "that a number of thoughtful Romans, Augustine of Hippo among the most famous, found compelling for a time before rejecting it."

This source names Augustine of Hippo directly: "Grace, De Natura et Gratia, written by Augustine of Hippo around 415, is Augustine's own polemical treatise against Pelagius, arguing that human nature, wounded by original sin, cannot achieve..."

Source On Nature and Grace (De Natura et Gratia)Augustine of Hippo
Pelagianism, Doctrines

This source names Augustine of Hippo directly: "fourth century through the age of Augustine of Hippo in the early fifth, treating in particular detail the circumcellions, bands of rural laborers and the itinerant poor who carried out attacks on..."

This source names Augustine of Hippo directly: "liturgy and, by his own account, moved Augustine of Hippo toward baptism."

This source names Augustine of Hippo directly: "Augustine of Hippo's The City of God is a primary foundational theological and philosophical text; the atlas records no publisher and no exact publication year because it survives through manuscript..."

Source The City of God (De Civitate Dei)Augustine of Hippo

This source names Augustine directly: "Saint Jerome, Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine, gather in discussion around an altar bearing a monstrance that displays the consecrated host."

This source names Augustine of Hippo directly: "Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine, prior of a Roman monastery, to the Kingdom of Kent, a deliberate choice since King Aethelberht held influence over neighbouring Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and was..."

This source names Augustine of Hippo directly: "The Rule of Saint Augustine, in Raymond Canning's translation published by Augustinian Press in 1986, renders Augustine of Hippo's own monastic rule, one of the oldest and most influential rules..."

Source The Rule of Saint Augustinetrans. Raymond Canning

Attributed Works

Just War, Doctrines

Augustine set the terms the later tradition worked from, chiefly in the City of God and against the Manichaeans.

Belongs to Tradition

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Depicted In

The drawing's directly named subject per the museum's own title, showing Augustine mitred as a bishop among clouds and angels, matching the standard bishop-and-book iconography the corroborating Wikipedia record independently describes for him.

Additional Source Augustine of Hippo (Wikipedia)

Related To

Augustine's long campaign against the Donatists is the main reason their case is remembered, and it is remembered in his words rather than in their own.

Traditions Founded

Augustine of Hippo is the system's founding and defining thinker.

Works Attributed

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005Augustine of HippoView the Source
Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
Augustine of Hippo (Wikipedia)
WikipediaDepicted In: Saint Augustine on Clouds Surrounded by Angels (Johann Jacob Eybelwieser, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010.160)
Quote, Depicted In: Saint Augustine on Clouds Surrounded by Angels (Johann Jacob Eybelwieser, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010.160)
Augustine is traditionally shown in Western art as a mitred bishop holding a book, sometimes with a pierced or flaming heart.
View the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.