Saint Augustine of Hippo is one of the pillars of the Roman Catholic Church, and the famed writer of the Confessions, whose philosophy is a bulwark of Western Christianity. Born to an upper-class Roman family in what is now Algeria, Augustine enjoyed the education and trappings of privilege. He was the son of a pagan father and a Christian mother (Saint Monica). In his earlier years, Augustine embraced the Eastern doctrine of Manichaeism, much to his mother’s chagrin, but gradually moved away from it. He was a teacher of philosophy and rhetoric as a young man. Before his conversion to Christianity and his rise to the bishopry and eventual sainthood, Augustine was noted for having lived a rather hedonistic lifestyle, and having famously prayed: “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.†Indeed, his prayer was answered. Augustine had a long standing affair with a Carthaginian woman, who gave birth to his only son, both of whom he left without a backward glance upon that conversion. In later years, Augustine was described as an ascetic who avoided all fleshly temptations. Believing that all earthly evils were the result of men not effectively controlling the weaker (both morally and intellectually) sex, Augustine would most likely have concurred in his own right to sainthood.
