Augustine in His Own Words
chapter 3
Augustine the Bishop
We think of Augustine as a writer and a theologian. He was both, certainly, but his writing and his theologizing sprang from and were shaped by his very demanding day job. For more than 35 years, Augustine spent his waking hours working as a bishop and pastor of a bustling North African seaport, Hippo Regius (now Annaba, on Algeria's eastern border).1 That Augustine was a bishop may seem a simple biographical fact, but outside of scholarly circles, its massive implications remain underappreciated. It is, in fact, a fact that puts every other side of Augustine into its rightful perspective.2
Getting ordained had never been Augustine's intention. From 387 to 391, he enjoyed retirement from the very public life he had known in Milan. All that changed overnight. In early 391, he traveled north from Thagaste to Hippo to recruit a new member for his monastic community. Standing innocently among the congregation, Augustine was caught off guard when Hippo's bishop, a Greek named Valerius, called on his people to nominate a new presbyter. Augustine was grabbed and ordained on the spot (see the two accounts below). He found a new public life thrust upon him, a life very different from the one he had known as orator in Milan. For the next five years, Augustine served as a presbyter, assisting Bishop Valerius, who encouraged him to relocate his monastic community to Hippo and gave him land to house it, a garden precinct attached to the episcopal residence. In 395, Augustine was consecrated as coadjutor bishop and, after Valerius's death in 396, assumed control of the church.
1. On Hippo and coastal North Africa, see Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 183–97; also Serge Lancel, "Hippo Regius," Aug-Lex 3: 351–66.
2. Augustinian scholars have appreciated this for decades, ever since Frederic Van der Meer's seminal work, Augustine the Bishop, trans. B. Battershaw and G. R. Lamb (London: Sheed and Ward, 1961). Originally published in Dutch in 1948, it is now dated in many respects.