Augustine

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After Saint Aurelius Augustine, church father and philosopher (Tagaste, Numidia 354 Hippo Regius, North Africa 430).

Despite their poverty, Augustine's parents ensured that he could study. He became a teacher of rhetoric in Tagaste and Carthage. From 383 he moved to Rome and Milan. After a miraculous conversion, he was baptized in Milan in 387.

He returned to North Africa, lived for three years as an ascetic in a monastery, was ordained a priest in 391 and bishop of Hippo Regius, near Carthage, in 396.

He founded a women's monastery there and gave much wise advice in one of his letters that was later adopted by various orders and congregations as 'the rule of Saint Augustine'. In 430 he died during the siege of the city by the Vandals.

He left more than five hundred writings, including the famous thirteen-volume Confessions, an autobiography in which he analyzed his own transgressions and conversion and exalted the power of divine grace. His feast day is August 28.