1Confessions
Augustine's Confessions is one of the most influential and most innovative works of Latin literature. Written in the author's early forties in the last years of the fourth century A.D. and during his first years as a bishop, they reflect on his life and on the activity of remembering and interpreting a life. Books I-IV are concerned with infancy and learning to talk, schooldays, sexual desire and adolescent rebellion, intense friendships and intellectual exploration. Augustine evolves and analyses his past with all the resources of the reading which shaped his mind: Virgil and Cicero, Neoplatonism and the Bible. This volume, which aims to be usable by students who are new to Augustine, alerts readers to the verbal echoes and allusions of Augustine's brilliant and varied Latin, and explains his theological and philosophical questioning of what God is and what it is to be human. The edition is intended for use by students and scholars of Latin literature, theology and Church history.
A lot of people think becoming a Christian is a decision you make. St Augustine doesn’t really think that. [source]
Carlos Eire
St Augustine of Hippo was one of the first thinkers to struggle with the concepts of time, memory and eternity. [source]
Paula Fredriksen
For the reader it’s somewhat like crashing a session of classic psychoanalytic therapy: Augustine speaks, God just listens, and we overhear. [source]
