Augustine the African

“For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath” (Matt. 13:12 KJV). As regards history and biography, some figures and tales simply continue to receive one thoughtful treatment upon another, while still others languish unaddressed.

Augustine of Hippo does not suffer from lack of biographical attention. Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo has set the bar for decades now, plotting Augustine in the world of late antiquity and amid a dizzying array of characters, conceptions, and challenges.^[1] Carol Harrison’s Augustine: Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity contextualizes his theological work, taking Confessions and debates with Pelagians and weaving them together artfully.^[2] Miles Hollingworth’s intellectual biography locates the early Christian bishop within the interplay of several intellectual and spiritual streams and at the crisis points of key doctrinal and moral convictions.^[3] Most recently, Catherine Conybeare’s Augustine the African seeks to interpret Augustine afresh in 2025—so far as we can—given that the vast majority of his formation and then his Christian service took place in North Africa rather than Rome or Milan. With the release of this latest major treatment of Augustine, the area of biographical study, which was already richly blessed, continues to receive grace upon grace.

Conybeare really does show value in attending to Augustine’s African context. Most noteworthy is her chapter on the Punic language. Helpful too is her attention to his friendship with Marcelinus, Roman official there during and after the Council of Carthage. The study repeatedly plots crises and narrative events on a geographic map to great effect, perhaps nowhere quite so clarifying as when showing just how Alaric’s siege of Rome in August 410 would have consequence for life in Hippo Regius in North Africa.

Conybeare’s book is not the first to seek to interpret Augustine outside the mainstream Western experience. Justo González has ably considered Augustine the mestizo in a small book.^[4] Here, however, there’s very good attention to the African context both as illuminating factor helping us better perceive Augustine and as limiting factor marking out the bounds of available data and perception. The chapter on the Punic language helps in showing how Bishop Augustine clearly minded to deliver (at great political cost) vernacular pastoral provision to Punic-speakers, and it also marks out the limits of what we can know about Augustine’s own fluency (or lack thereof) in this local language. Herein is not tokenism but clear, data-based analysis that shows genuine payoff both in insight revealed and limitations no longer concealed. Having read many biographies and most of Augustine’s writings, I still found the borders of the known to be extended in some places and more carefully marked out in others.

There are still limits to this biography. It only does so much, as is true of each of the excellent studies on Augustine. The book notes theological disputes. It offers very little by way of conceptual clarification regarding their nature. The study offers character study of Ambrose of Milan. It concerns itself only rarely, however, with any prior Christian tradition as prompt or source for Augustine’s own practice and principles. If Hollingworth’s biography focuses almost entirely on such matters of intellectual genealogy and development, apparently there was little left for Conybeare to concern herself in that regard.^[5] Additionally, the book shows very little concern for Augustine’s piety and ascetical practice, as relates to the deep and diverse monastic tradition that was already vibrant and would continue to be so. If Peter Brown’s biography sets the gold standard for plotting the thinker’s influence in a world of competing spiritualities and rules for living, then here too is precious little to concern this biographer.

All that said, Conybeare’s biography truly does contribute to the study of Augustine. It adds another element, local flavor of the North African sort. The Berber mother. The Punic vernacular of the locals. The rural metaphors frequently marking his sermons. Conybeare helps even the longtime reader of Augustine catch a host of features that could easily pass by unremarked. She also makes entry into the story accessible to the novice. She is masterly in giving single paragraph surveys, and the book also includes helpful resources to keep an eye on the big picture (a list of characters and a timeline).

Augustine was finally buried in Pavia, just outside Milan. Still further, his tomb lies just above the crypt of Boethius, the great medieval mind who aimed to comprehend the classical and Christian streams. Conybeare suggests that herein is an enacted parable, losing his African identity and placing him atop a western and European project. Is that parable instructive or just riddling? It is perhaps worth concluding with another verse from Matthew’s recounting of Jesus’s instruction about his parables. Matthew 13:13 (KJV) adds: “They seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.” A good biography does not add life—it is too late for such a task—but it just might grant eyes to see what is truly signified therein. Those curious to know more will find that Catherine Conybeare’s book offers aid in seeing and hearing and, thus, hope of better understanding Augustine the African.

[1] Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, Second Edition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000).

[2] Carol Harrison, Augustine: Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity (Christian Theology in Context; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

[3] Miles Hollingworth, Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

[4] Justo González, The Mestizo Augustine: A Theologian Between Two Cultures (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016).

[5] Interestingly, Conybeare’s previous monograph does quite a bit of heavy spadework in this regard by offering careful readings of the Cassiacum Dialogues of his early Christian years (The Irrational Augustine [Oxford Early Christian Studies; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006]). Only portions of that study appear piecemeal here, and the samplings conveyed therein skew far more to the non-Christian sources and traditions.

Michael Allen
Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando