Confessions

Summary

The Confessions is a prayer in thirteen books addressed to God, in which Augustine recounts his life up to his mother's death and then turns to philosophical reflection on memory, time and the creation narrative of Genesis. Books I to IX are autobiographical. Augustine reflects on infancy, already marked in his view by greed and jealousy, and on his schooling in Thagaste and Madauros, where he loved Latin literature, wept for Dido and hated Greek. In adolescence he describes the stirrings of lust and a famous episode in which he and friends stole pears they did not want, for the pleasure of doing wrong together. At Carthage he studies rhetoric, takes a concubine with whom he has a son, Adeodatus, and is inspired by Cicero's Hortensius to love wisdom; but finding the Bible's style crude, he joins the Manichaeans, whose dualism seems to explain evil. He describes his grief at the death of a close friend, which made everything he looked at seem like death. Gradually disillusioned with Manichaean teachings, he goes to Rome and then to Milan as professor of rhetoric, where the sermons of Bishop Ambrose show him how to read Scripture allegorically. Monica follows him and arranges a respectable marriage; his concubine is sent back to Africa, leaving him heartbroken. Neoplatonist books help him conceive of God as immaterial and of evil as a privation of good, but his will remains divided, bound by habit and sexual desire. Stories of conversions, including that of the rhetorician Victorinus and of men inspired by the life of Antony of Egypt, intensify his inner struggle. In a garden in Milan in 386, in anguish, he hears a child's voice chanting 'take up and read', opens Paul's Epistle to the Romans and reads a passage against revelling and lust; his doubt dissolves. He resigns his post, citing chest trouble, retires to Cassiciacum, and is baptised by Ambrose at Easter 387. Book IX ends with the vision he and Monica share at a window in Ostia, and her death soon after. Book X examines memory and the senses, and his present temptations. Book XI investigates the nature of time, concluding that past and future exist only in the present mind as memory and expectation. Books XII and XIII interpret the opening of Genesis, culminating in a meditation on the Sabbath rest of God.

Top Lessons

• The divided will

  Augustine shows that knowing the good is not the same as wanting it wholeheartedly. His account of habit binding the will is one of the first detailed analyses of inner conflict.

• Grief and the love of mortal things

  The death of his friend in Book IV teaches Augustine that loving mortal things as if they were permanent leads to devastation. He reframes love rather than renouncing it.

• Memory and time as mysteries of the mind

  Books X and XI turn autobiography into philosophy, asking how the mind holds the past and future. Augustine's insight that time is experienced in the present mind remains influential.

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Medical Lens

A foundational text for the history of introspective psychology. Book IV's account of grief after a friend's death is one of antiquity's most detailed descriptions of bereavement, including weeping, restlessness and a loathing of familiar places. Book VIII's analysis of the divided will and the power of habit (consuetudo) has been compared to modern discussions of addiction and ambivalence; Alypius's compulsive attraction to gladiatorial games (Book VI) reads as an ancient case study of behavioural compulsion, and Monica's youthful habit of sipping wine (Book IX) is described in terms of habit escalation. Book IV mentions Vindicianus, a physician and proconsul who warns Augustine off astrology. Augustine mentions childhood fever and deferred baptism (Book I), a toothache (Book IX) and chest trouble that helped justify resigning his post (Book IX). Book X's exploration of memory anticipates questions of cognitive psychology. Readings of Augustine's experiences in modern diagnostic terms should be offered as interpretation.

• Book I.11

  As a boy Augustine falls ill with a fever and stomach pains and begs for baptism, which is postponed when he recovers.

• Book IV.3

  The physician Vindicianus, who crowned Augustine in a poetry contest, warns him against astrology.

• Book IV.4–9

  Grief at the death of a friend: weeping, hatred of familiar places, weariness of life and fear of death.

• Book VI.8

  Alypius, dragged to the amphitheatre, opens his eyes and becomes intoxicated by the bloodshed, returning compulsively.

• Book VIII.5, 8–12

  The chain of habit, the divided will, physical agitation in the garden, and the conversion.

• Book IX.2, 4

  Chest pain and difficulty breathing support his resignation from teaching; a severe toothache relieved after prayer.

• Book IX.8

  Monica as a girl falls into a habit of sipping wine from the cellar until rebuked by a servant.

• Book IX.10–13

  Monica's fever and death at Ostia and Augustine's struggle to restrain his tears.

• Book X.8–19

  Inquiry into the structure of memory, forgetting and recollection.