This classic biography was first published forty-five years ago and has since established itself as the standard account of Saint Augustine's life and teaching. The remarkable discovery of a considerable number of letters and sermons by Augustine cast fresh light on the first and last decades of his experience as a bishop. These circumstantial texts have led Peter Brown to reconsider some of his judgments on Augustine, both as the author of the Confessions and as the elderly bishop preaching and writing in the last years of Roman rule in north Africa. Brown's reflections on the significance of these exciting new documents are contained in two chapters of a substantial Epilogue to his biography (the text of which is unaltered). He also reviews the changes in scholarship about Augustine since the 1960s. A personal as well as a scholarly fascination infuse the book-length epilogue and notes that Brown has added to his acclaimed portrait of the bishop of Hippo.

The life and works of Augustine of Hippo (354-430) have shaped the development of the Christian Church, sparking controversy and influencing the ideas of theologians through subsequent centuries. His words are still frequently quoted in devotions throughout the global Church today. His key themes retain a striking contemporary relevance - what is the place of the Church in the world? What is the relation between nature and grace? Augustine's intellectual development is recounted with clarity and warmth in this newly rediscovered biography of Augustine, as interpreted by the acclaimed church historian, the late Professor Henry Chadwick. Augustine's intellectual journey from schoolboy and student to Bishop and champion of Western Christendom in a period of intense political upheaval, is narrated in Chadwick's characteristically rigorous yet sympathetic style. With a foreword by Peter Brown reflecting on Chadwick's distinctive approach to Augustine.

Here is an outstanding new intellectual biography of Augustine of Hippo. Augustine was one of the West's first public philosophers. Intellectually brilliant and a gifted writer, he is known primarily as one of the great figures of Christian late antiquity. In this new biography we encounter him through the complexities of his remarkable personality. Miles Hollingworth demonstrates that it was as a personality that he turned against his Age to explore the shocking relevance of one life to God and history. His autobiography, the Confessions, is held up by many today as the first truly modern book. Saint Augustine of Hippo is written at once for scholars and students but also for the huge number of intelligent lay readers for whom Augustine is a towering figure in the history of Western civilisation.

The restless heart and searching mind of this influential early church father can offer spiritual and intellectual companionship for your spiritual journey. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), theologian, priest, and bishop, is one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity. He is known as much for his long interior struggle that ended with conversion and baptism at age thirty-two as for his influential teachings on human will, original sin and the theology of just war. Cherished as a model for the pursuit of a life of spiritual grace and criticized for his theory of predestination, Augustine is recognized as a living expression of the passion to understand and communicate the deeper meanings of human experience. With fresh translations drawn from Augustine's voluminous writings and probing facing-page commentary, Augustinian scholar Joseph T. Kelley, PhD, provides insight into the mind and heart of this foundational Christian figure. Kelley illustrates how Augustine’s keen intellect, rhetorical skill and passionate faith reshaped the theological language and dogmatic debates of early Christianity. He explores the stormy religious arguments and political upheavals of the fifth century, Augustine’s controversial teachings on predestination, sexuality and marriage, and the deep undercurrents of Augustine’s spiritual quest that still inspire Christians today.

This volume offers a comprehensive portrait--or rather, self-portrait, since its words are mostly Augustine's own--drawn from the breadth of his writings and from the long course of his career

"This study provides an outline of St. Augustine's career and discusses three major fields of his controversial writings: against the Manichees, who denied the essential goodness of the material creation; the Donatists, who conceived of the Church only as an assembly of saints, and denied that God would operate through a sinful minister; and against the British theologian Pelagius and his supporters, whose concern for personal holiness and individual responsibility for conduct led them to deny the Fall and to maintain a theology of divine grace which saw infant baptism as desirable but not essential for salvation. Augustine's attacks on Pelagianism initiated a debate which lasted for many centuries, and still remains controversial to this day; but whatever view is taken with regard to his doctrine, his influence has been profound, and no serious Christian theologian can afford to ignore the issues which he raised." [Back cover].

Magic has been an important term in Western history and continues to be an essential topic in the modern academic study of religion, anthropology, sociology, and cultural history. Defining Magic is the first volume to assemble key texts that aim at determining the nature of magic, establish its boundaries and key features, and explain its working. The reader brings together seminal writings from antiquity to today. The texts have been selected on the strength of their success in defining magic as a category, their impact on future scholarship, and their originality. The writings are divided into chronological sections and each essay is separately introduced for student readers. Together, these texts - from Philosophy, Theology, Religious Studies, and Anthropology - reveal the breadth of critical approaches and responses to defining what is magic. CONTRIBUTORS: Aquinas, Augustine, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Dennis Diderot, Emile Durkheim, Edward Evans-Pritchard, James Frazer, Susan Greenwood, Robin Horton, Edmund Leach, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Christopher Lehrich, Bronislaw Malinowski, Marcel Mauss, Agrippa von Nettesheim, Plato, Pliny, Plotin, Isidore of Sevilla, Jesper Sorensen, Kimberley Stratton, Randall Styers, Edward Tylor

The first collection of Saint Augustine's varied writings on human and divine love—chosen to reflect his lifelong preoccupation with ordo amoris, the principle of rightly directed love. "My weight is my love," Saint Augustine writes in The Confessions. He sees our ability to love as disordered by sin, so that we often choose badly what and how to love. Only by recognizing that we are commanded to love God first can any other object of our love be properly ordered, Late Have I Loved Thee draws on the riches found in Augustine's sermons, letters, treatises, and Scripture commentaries, as well as passages from The Confessions and City of God. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) was the most prolific writer of Christian antiquity and the most influential theologian in Church history. In his first encyclical, God Is Love, current Pope Benedict XVI acknowledges his indebtedness to him. When we read Augustine today, we encounter the same direct, eloquent passions his original listeners experienced, infused with his deep sense of human weakness and burning desire for union with God.

It will remain the standard for a long time to come.

The Rule of Augustine, the oldest monastic rule with Western origins, still provides inspiration for over 150 Christian communities. This account of Augustine's contributions to the monastic spirituality of the late Roman world and of his achievement as a monastic legislator fills a critical gap in Augustinian studies. Tracing Augustine's progress from a philosophical to a biblical spirituality and his development of a monastic ideal largely shaped by Greco-Roman philosophical and rhetorical influences, Lawless also discusses Augustine's renunciation of sexuality, property, and worldly ambition at his conversion as a foreshadowing of the future vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. In addition, he argues for the existence of a monastery at Thagaste from 388 to 391. This book includes new English translations of the Regulations for a Monastery, the Rule, and Letter 211.