The Living Tradition An Orthodox Archive of the Church Fathers and Early Church

Canonised Father of the Church

Augustine of Hippo

Also known as Aurelius Augustinus; Blessed Augustine

The most influential theologian of the Latin West, honoured as a saint in the Orthodox Church, and read there with a discrimination that the West has not always applied.

  • Received Orthodox teachingTaught consistently and received throughout the Orthodox Church, though not necessarily formulated in a conciliar definition. This is not a claim that no Father ever wrote differently.
  • Individual patristic opinionThe view of a particular Father that the Church has not received as its own teaching. The Fathers are not individually infallible: some speculated, some changed their minds, some were later corrected.
  • Historical consensusBroadly agreed among historians working from the surviving evidence. Consensus can shift when the evidence or the method changes.
  • Disputed historyHistorians genuinely disagree. The page gives the range the evidence supports rather than choosing the most striking version.

Awaiting official-source verification Content last reviewed 2026-08-29

What still needs checking (2)
  • No work of Augustine is archived here, though the working copy contains many. Archive the Confessions and On the Trinity, then upgrade this page.
  • Confirm the Orthodox reception of Augustine against an official Orthodox source; this is a point where Orthodox writers differ in emphasis and the page should show that precisely rather than generally.

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Dates
354 - 430 — Born 13 November 354 at Thagaste; died 28 August 430 during the siege of Hippo.
Region
Roman North Africa
See
Hippo Regius
Language of composition
Latin
Commemoration
15 June (Orthodox Church in America and other Orthodox jurisdictions) — Western commemoration is on 28 August. Julian-calendar jurisdictions observe the date thirteen days later on the civil calendar.

Life

Augustine was born in North Africa to a Christian mother and a pagan father, taught rhetoric at Carthage, Rome and Milan, spent nine years as a Manichean hearer, and was baptised by Ambrose in 387 after a long and painfully documented struggle. He became bishop of Hippo in 395 and remained there until the Vandals besieged the city as he lay dying.

He wrote continuously for forty years: the Confessions, the City of God, On the Trinity, commentaries, sermons, and controversial works against Manicheans, Donatists and Pelagians.

Works

Generally accepted as authentic

  • Confessions — Not archived here.
  • The City of God — Not archived here.
  • On the Trinity — Not archived here.
  • On Christian Doctrine; the anti-Donatist and anti-Pelagian works; the sermons and letters — Not archived here.

Theological and spiritual contribution

The Confessions invented a genre and remain unmatched in it: an account of a life addressed to God rather than to a reader, in which memory, desire and grace are the real subjects. The City of God gave the West a theology of history. On the Trinity worked out a psychological analogy for the divine life that shaped Latin thought permanently.

Against the Donatists he argued that the validity of a sacrament does not rest on the holiness of the minister, which settled a question that had troubled North Africa for a century.

Controversy and reception

  • Ambrose of Milan

    Provincial governor acclaimed bishop by the people of Milan before he was baptised; he shaped Latin theology, brought Greek thought west, and made emperors answer to the Church.

    Father or writer

  • Jerome

    Translator of the Latin Vulgate and the most learned Latin scholar of the ancient Church; combative, difficult, and the Western writer who pressed hardest for a shorter Old Testament.

    Father or writer

  • Salvation, grace and freedom

    Not a transaction but a healing: what Orthodoxy means by being saved.

    Theme

  • The Mysteries

    Baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist and the Church's other sacramental acts.

    Theme

Your notes

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Sources for this page

  1. Tier C The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustine Philip Schaff (ed.) Confessions translated edition of primary texts Not archived here; recorded as an outstanding item. Source record

Tiers are explained in the methodology. No page on this site has been reviewed or approved by any bishop, priest, synod or seminary.