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Text Box: Background Aurelius Augustine was born in the year 354 AD, on the 13th of November. He was born in his family home in the North African province of Numidia, in the town of Thagaste. He was the first child of Patricius & Monica. Parents Augustine's father Patricius was of Roman colonial lineage, and was a curial (city councilor), and a minor land owner in Thagaste. He had three children to his wife Monica, the oldest of which was Aurelius Augustine. Patricius was a pagan most of his life, and had an angry, sometimes violent disposition. Only later in his life did Patricius convert to Catholicism, living only a year after his baptism, to die in 372 AD. Monica, Augustine's mother, was a Christian woman born into a Christian family. Her family were Berbers, a settled & nomadic race from Northern Africa. Monica was an avid believer in Christianity, and prayed always that her husband & son Augustine would embrace her faith. When Augustine joined the Manichees, Monica was so appalled that she wouldn't allow him into their house. When Augustine was teaching in Milan, Monica tried to arrange a Christian marriage for her son, but failed in that pursuit. Monica lived to see her son baptised, and died in 387.      His Hometown Tagaste was a modest Roman community in a river valley 64 km from the North African coast, in the province of Numidia. This farming municipality was located roughly 45 km south of Hippo, and about 70 km south west of Carthage. It is now a part of Algeria, at the site of modern day Souk Ahras.   Britannica says: " It lay just a few miles short of the point where the veneer of Roman civilization thinned out in the highlands of Numidia".        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                         

 

                                                                                                                                                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan Thawley Saint Augustine College 2003