THE DARK AGES (PART 2)

Born in the northern African town of Tagaste, Augustine had a Christian mother and a pagan father. His studies in Latin literature and grammar led to his becoming a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage. The unruly students there forced him to quit and go to Rome, where he opened a school of his own. Here the students behaved better, but they reneged on the payment of his fees. As a result, Augustine applied for, and got, a position as municipal professor of rhetoric in Milan. At this point his life changed dramatically.


Until this time, Augustine, in spite of his mother’s entreaties and prayers, was not a Christian. Moreover, he had lived a dissolute life: he had a mistress, an illegitimate son, and was, he tells us in his Confessions, thoroughly licentious. But in Milan Augustine came under the influence of the bishop, Saint Ambrose, who converted him to Christianity. The intellectual conversion came first, the doctrinal conversion he found more difficult, because he had trouble resisting the temptations of the flesh. (“Give me chastity,” he prayed, “only not yet.”)

Ultimately, however, Augustine became thoroughly indoctrinated. He gave up his professorship—and his mistress—returning with his son, Adeodatus, his mother, and some friends to Cassiciacum, a town near Milan, where he conducted seminars, attempting to work out Christian answers to philosophical questions about happiness, truth, and good and evil.

Using Plato’s philosophy (as well philosophies of other Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers), Augustine was able to develop a Christian theology that was believable to most of its adherents. And—along with coercion, banishment, punishment, and murder—Christianity became the undisputed religion of the Roman Empire. Yes, any persons who dared to speak anything contrary to Christianity or say anything that was not sanctioned by the Church—even if it was Christianity—were risking their lives.