[24] Believing the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, he helped formulate the doctrine of original sin and made significant contributions to the development of just war theory.

In the East, his teachings are more disputed and were notably attacked by John Romanides,[31] but other theologians and figures of the Eastern Orthodox Church have shown significant approbation of his writings, chiefly Georges Florovsky.

[47] Scholars generally agree that Augustine and his family were Berbers, an ethnic group indigenous to North Africa,[48][49][50] but were heavily Romanized, speaking only Latin at home as a matter of pride and dignity.

[54] It is assumed that his mother, Monica, was of Berber origin, on the basis of her name,[55][56] but as his family were honestiores, an upper class of citizens known as honorable men, Augustine's first language was likely Latin.

[63] It was while he was a student in Carthage that he read Cicero's dialogue Hortensius (now lost), which he described as leaving a lasting impression, enkindling in his heart the love of wisdom and a great thirst for truth.

He was warned by his mother to avoid fornication (sex outside marriage), but Augustine persisted in the relationship[66] for over fifteen years,[67] and the woman gave birth to his son Adeodatus (372–388), which means "Gift from God",[68] who was viewed as extremely intelligent by his contemporaries.

Resorting to the sortes biblicae, he opened a book of St. Paul's writings (Confessiones 8.12.29) at random and read Romans 13:13–14: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.

Possidius also described Augustine's personal traits in detail, drawing a portrait of a man who ate sparingly, worked tirelessly, despised gossip, shunned the temptations of the flesh, and exercised prudence in the financial stewardship of his see.

[102] Spending his final days in prayer and repentance, he requested the penitential Psalms of David be hung on his walls so he could read them and upon which led him to "[weep] freely and constantly" according to Possidius' biography.

Even before the Council of Ephesus, he defended the Ever-Virgin Mary as the Mother of God, believing her to be "full of grace" (following earlier Latin writers such as Jerome) on account of her sexual integrity and innocence.

[165] Some authors perceive Augustine's doctrine as directed against human sexuality and attribute his insistence on continence and devotion to God as coming from his need to reject his own highly sensual nature as described in the Confessions.

Already in his pre-Pelagian writings, Augustine taught that Original Sin is transmitted to his descendants by concupiscence,[170] which he regarded as the passion of both soul and body,[i] making humanity a massa damnata (mass of perdition, condemned crowd) and much enfeebling, though not destroying, the freedom of the will.

[173] Anselm of Canterbury established in his Cur Deus Homo the definition that was followed by the great 13th-century Schoolmen, namely that Original Sin is the "privation of the righteousness which every man ought to possess," thus separating it from concupiscence, with which some of Augustine's disciples had identified it,[174][175] as later did Luther and Calvin.

[179] About 412, Augustine became the first Christian to understand predestination as a divine unilateral pre-determination of individuals' eternal destinies independently of human choice, although his prior Manichaean sect did teach this concept.

"[190] Presbyterian professor and author John Riggs argued that Augustine held that Christ is really present in the elements of the Eucharist, but not in a bodily manner, because his body remains in Heaven.

His early dialogues Contra academicos (386) and De Magistro (389), both written shortly after his conversion to Christianity, reflect his engagement with sceptical arguments and show the development of his doctrine of divine illumination.

[212] Patristics scholar Ken Wilson argues that every early Christian author with extant writings who wrote on the topic prior to Augustine of Hippo (412) advanced human free choice rather than a deterministic God.

[225][226][227] The sentiment sometimes attributed to Augustine that Christians should let the Jews "survive but not thrive" (it is repeated by the author James Carroll in his book Constantine's Sword, for example)[228] is apocryphal and is not found in any of his writings.

[232][233] Before the Fall, Augustine believed sex was a passionless affair, "just like many a laborious work accomplished by the compliant operation of our other limbs, without any lascivious heat",[234] that the seed "might be sown without any shameful lust, the genital members simply obeying the inclination of the will".

[citation needed] Under the influence of Bede, Alcuin, and Rabanus Maurus, De catechizandis rudibus came to exercise an important role in the education of clergy at the monastic schools, especially from the eighth century onwards.

[252]: 125 During the Great Persecution, "When Roman soldiers came calling, some of the [Catholic] officials handed over the sacred books, vessels, and other church goods rather than risk legal penalties" over a few objects.

[j]: 334  No one is exactly sure when the Circumcellions and the Donatists allied, but for decades, they fomented protests and street violence, accosted travellers and attacked random Catholics without warning, often doing serious and unprovoked bodily harm such as beating people with clubs, cutting off their hands and feet, and gouging out eyes.

"[252]: 115  Frederick H. Russell[259] describes this as "a pastoral strategy in which the church did the persecuting with the dutiful assistance of Roman authorities,"[252]: 115  adding that it is "a precariously balanced blend of external discipline and inward nurturance.

"[252]: 125 Augustine placed limits on the use of coercion, recommending fines, imprisonment, banishment, and moderate floggings, preferring beatings with rods which was a common practice in the ecclesial courts.

Apart from those, Augustine is probably best known for his Confessions, which is a personal account of his earlier life, and for De civitate Dei (The City of God, consisting of 22 books), which he wrote to restore the confidence of his fellow Christians, which was badly shaken by the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410.

In both his philosophical and theological reasoning, Augustine was greatly influenced by Stoicism, Platonism and Neoplatonism, particularly by the work of Plotinus, author of the Enneads, probably through the mediation of Porphyry and Victorinus (as Pierre Hadot has argued).

[171] According to Leo Ruickbie, Augustine's arguments against magic, differentiating it from a miracle, were crucial in the early Church's fight against paganism and became a central thesis in the later denunciation of witches and witchcraft.

"[277] Pope Francis suggests that Augustine's reflections on the relationship between the "beloved disciple" and Jesus (John 13:23: "reclining next to him") contributed to the development of devotion to the Sacred Heart in the following centuries.

As Dr. Andrea Palent[280] says: Maria Antonia Walpurgis revised the five-part Jesuit drama into a two-part oratorio liberty in which she limits the subject to the conversion of Augustine and his submission to the will of God.

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