Augustine in His Own Words
Confessions 13
(6.11) I marveled that other mortals were still alive when he, whom I had loved as if he would never die, was dead. And I marveled all the more that I, who was his other self, should still live when he was dead. . . .
(8.13) Time takes no holiday. It is never idle as it glides through our senses. It works wonders within one's mind. See how it came and went "from day to day" (Ps 60:9), and in coming and going it subtly introduced into me other hopes and other memories. Gradually it restored me to the kinds of pleasures which I formerly enjoyed, and my sorrow gave way to these.17
Ambrose of Milan
By age 30, Augustine had reached the pinnacle of his profession. He won the prestigious post of orator for the city of Milan. At the time, Milan was the emperor's residence, and Augustine knew that he would rub shoulders with the most powerful men in the Roman Empire, that if he played his politics right, he could win some high government post. Milan changed Augustine indelibly. His conversion took place there. The one who prompted his turn to orthodox Christianity was Ambrose, bishop of Milan (d. 397).18 Ambrose had come from a senatorial family, was highly educated, and could do what Augustine could not: read Greek. He was attuned to theological advances in the Greek East and passed these on to his congregation. These included a way of reading the Bible allegorically ("spiritually"). Ambrose drew inspiration especially from the commentaries of Origen (d. 254), the Alexandrian biblical scholar. Ambrose's sermons were a revelation to Augustine, who had been raised with what we today would call a fundamentalist view of the Bible. Ambrose's symbolic readings of Old Testament texts subtly debunked Manichean objections and provoked Augustine's intellectual conversion. From Confessions, Books 5–6:
([Book 5] 13.23) So I came to Milan, to Ambrose the bishop, known throughout the world as among the best of men, reverent in his worship of You. At that time his eloquent words were busy distributing to Your people "the fat of Your wheat" (Ps 80:17, 147:14) and "the gladness of Your oil" (Ps 4:8) and the "sober intoxication" of Your wine.19 Unknowingly I was led by
17. Conf. 4.4.7–8.13 (CCL 27:43–46); trans. Bourke, FOTC 21:78–84. For an analysis, see James Wetzel, "Book Four: The Trappings of Woe and Confession of Grief," in Paffenroth and Kennedy, Reader's Companion to Augustine's Confessions, 53–69.
18. See Boniface Ramsey, Ambrose, Early Church Fathers (New York: Routledge, 1997); Goulven Madec, Saint Ambroise et la philosophie, CEASA 61 (Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 1974); J. Patout Burns, "Ambrose Preaching to Augustine: The Shaping of Faith," in Augustine: Second Founder of the Faith, ed. Joseph C. Schnaubelt and Frederick van Fleteren (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 373–86.
19. "Sober intoxication": The phrase is from Ambrose, Hymn 1.7.23–24 (Splendor paternae gloriae). For a translation, see Carolinne White, Early Christian Latin Poets, Early Church Fathers (New York: Routledge, 2000), 47–48.