The Example of a Woman
     Sexual Renunciation and Augustine's Conversion
                 to Christianity in 386



                                           F.B.A. Asiedu
                         Department of Religious Studies
                              University of Pennsylvania
                                           February 1994

                               Endnotes are marked by
                               numerals in <<>> brackets
                               and appear at the bottom of
                               the file.  File as a whole is
                               about 100K.


For you converted me to you so that I neither sought a 
wife nor any other worldly hope. I was now standing in 
the rule of faith in the same way that you had revealed 
me to her so many years before. And you transformed her 
mourning into a joy more abundant than she had wished 
and much dearer and more chaste than that of having 
grandchildren of my flesh.<<1>>   

These are the words that conclude Bk. 8 of the 
Confessions, where Augustine recounts the dramatic final 
moments of his conversion to Christianity. In these 
words he speaks about God converting him "in such a 
way"<<2>> that the varied desires and confusing interests 
that gathered around him in Milan were shed like old 
garments never to be taken up again. Augustine also 
describes his mother's new joy, and relates for the 
first time that in Monnica's attempts for her son's 
marriage we must see not only her desire for his 
conversion but even the domestic joys of seeing 
Augustine's offspring. 
     This untoward domestic hope also reveals a 
remarkable imperfection. Why does Monnica cherish such a 
desire when there is already a grandson in the person of 
Adeodatus? Is it simply a wish for more grandchildren? 
Or, is it, as may well have been the case, a desire for 
grandchildren whose status in Roman society would not be 
so questionable? Monnica and Patricius had always been 
conscious of their precarious place in the social world 
of Tagaste, and this keen sense of their place in that 
society had contributed to the kind of aspirations they 
had entertained for Augustine's career. 
     The concern here for grandchildren falls into that 
general order of earthly desires which comes in for 
criticism in the early part of the Confessions.<<3>> The 
conclusion of Bk. 8 recalls this other side of "pious" 
Monnica. In the moment of resolution for her son, 
Monnica too undergoes a conversion: her mourning is 
turned into a joy that is purer and more chaste, a joy 
that is not tied to earthly cares and hopes. The word 
used here to describe Monnica's transformation is 
couertisti, the same word Augustine's uses to describe 
his own experience.
     For himself, Augustine believes he has received a 
double portion. Not only is he converted to God, but he 
is converted from the desire for a wife and the honor of 
a respectable career. This tandem, of love for the world 
and a woman's embrace, emerge as the twin anxieties that 
overshadow Augustine's last year in Milan before his 
conversion. Augustine's words are the invocations of a 
renunciate: turning his back on the world --his hopes, 
desires and dreams. To have given up the hope of 
marriage meant that Augustine was turning his back on 
the Milanese girl on whom he was in waiting. But why 
this drastic change? And why so final an act of sexual 
renunciation? What brought Augustine from the position 
of seeking a wife in order to prepare himself for 
Christian baptism (hence conversion to Christianity) to 
the point where conversion entailed an act of sexual 
renunciation?
     Studies of Augustine's conversion have been 
unusually silent on this point.<<4>> Even when references 
have been made to a passage such as De bono coniugali 
5.5, where Augustine describes a scenario that fits all 
too perfectly the circumstances under which his first 
concubine was separated from him, it has not led to 
reconsiderations of the events shortly preceding 
Augustine's conversion. Even less has it engendered a 
reevaluation of the role of the mother of Adeodatus in 
Augustine's conversion. Peter Brown, for example, sees 
the patent self-referentiality of Augustine's words and 
merely comments that in the circumstances Augustine 
failed.<<5>> But the sense of failure is not seen as in any 
way constitutive of the equation of sexual renunciation 
with conversion to Christianity. In his much earlier 
biography of Augustine, Brown went so far as to 
acknowledge the ascetic implications of the vow of 
Augustine's first concubine, but the matter was made to 
rest there.<<6>> 
     An oversight of another kind shows up in Frederick 
Van Fleteren's essay on "Augustine's Theory of 
Conversion."<<7>> He counts at least twelve conversion 
stories or retellings of conversions in the Confessions. 
But the experience of the mother of Adeodatus is not 
included among them, even though there are clear 
indications that some kind of conversion may have taken 
place. Since Augustine weaves his own story around the 
other conversion narratives, the absence of his 
concubine from the circle of those individuals whose 
conversions may have affected Augustine's means that her 
possible influence is all but precluded. 
     In this study I will attempt three things. First I 
will try to show that the equation of sexual 
renunciation with Christian conversion is essential for 
a proper understanding of the nature of Augustine's 
conversion. Second, that Augustine came to make the link 
between conversion and continence through a belated 
response to the vow of sexual renunciation made by the 
mother of Adeodatus. And third, the nature of his 
concubine's vow and Augustine's description of it in the 
Confessions constitutes a muted conversion narrative --
perhaps the most pivotal conversion story in the whole 
text, because it established the terms in which 
Augustine came to understand his possible conversion to 
Christianity. 

     As I have already indicated Augustine describes the 
final phase of his conversion to Christianity in highly 
personal terms, relegating to the background the way in 
which the scholarly debate over the past century has 
been shaped. Since Alfaric<<8>> much of the discussion about 
Augustine's conversion has centered on whether he was 
converted to something less authentically Christian in 
386. Alfaric put the matter bluntly by saying that the 
conversion in 386 was to Neo-Platonism and that the 
conversion to Christianity actually came years later, in 
396. Not the least of the reasons given for this 
understanding of Augustine's conversions are the 
apparent differences between the early works (especially 
the so-called Cassiciacum dialogues written between his 
conversion and baptism) and the works coming out of the 
period following his De diversus queastionibus VII ad 
Simplicianum. However much others have sought over the 
years to defend the putatively Christian basis of 
Augustine's conversion in 386 the literary record tended 
to get in the way, or was perceived to get in the way.
     The view that now holds the field is the carefully 
nuanced argument of P. Courcelle<<9>> who maintains that the 
Christianity vs. Neo-Platonism polarity is a tad 
misleading when it comes to the Milanese background of 
Augustine's conversion experience. Rather than seeing 
two distinct episodic conversions, one Neo-Platonic and 
the other Christian, Courcelle describes a Milanese 
environment that is at once Christian and Neo-Platonic. 
In which case, Augustine would have encountered Neo-
Platonism in Christian dress and vice-versa, and did not 
have the opportunity to encounter one without the other. 
From Ambrose, Simplicianus, Manlius Theodorus and 
others, he would have breathed a Christian Neo-Platonism 
without any perceptual sense that this was an odd way of 
receiving one's Christianity.
     By removing the antithesis between Christianity and 
Neo-Platonism in the Milan of the 380s Courcelle allows 
for the kind of simultaneous influence which seems to be 
evident in the early writings. The emphasis throughout 
Courcelle's analysis is on the intellectual side of 
Augustine's experience over and against the moral 
aspects of his conversion.<<10>> Courcelle all but overlooks 
the terms in which Augustine described and understood 
his conversion. Even if one is inclined to accept the 
much later theological re-interpretation of his 
experience found in the Confessions with some amount of 
skepticism, it must still be recognized that for 
Augustine the conversion in 386 was something very 
intensely personal. For him the important thing was that 
at that time he was able to turn his back on the world 
in two very specific ways: he was prepared to give up 
his ambitions for a public career and was willing to 
resign himself to a life of sexual renunciation. 

Some Early Accounts of Augustine's Conversion
Some of the earliest literary accounts of Augustine's 
conversion deserve mention at this point because they 
tend to support the intellectual side of his conversion 
to the possible exclusion of the dramatic moral crisis 
that he appears to have gone through. The preface to De 
beata vita contains one such account. In a dedication to 
Manlius Theodorus, Augustine presents De beata vita as a 
philosophical exercise that had long been overdue. He 
tells Theodorus that he had delayed his full embrace of 
philosophy for reasons that were less than estimable. In 
stating the reasons, there is no mention whatsoever of a 
traumatic experience preceding his conversion. Rather, 
Augustine refers first to the three classes of people 
who would be fit for philosophy. He places himself in 
the third class, those who, since youth through wasting 
their lives in useless pursuit yearn for a standard, 
hankering for a homeland they remember only too vaguely. 
Some return directly or, delayed by some enticements, 
they wander until they finally make the sailing. 
Sometimes they even suffer great peril in their 
wanderings, like star-gazing (a possible allusion to 
astrology?), when they ought to be boarding the ship 
that would bring them home.   
     However, Augustine believes that all who endeavor 
to reach the goal must encounter some obstacles. And 
here he alludes to a huge mountain before the port of 
call as befitting the kind of obstacles that one might 
well confront.<<11>> Still the greatest obstacle, and 
Augustine gets a lot of mileage out of this one, is 
pride. This emphasis on pride as the greatest obstacle 
to the Truth and the blessed life anticipates his later 
critique of the Platonists as a band of philosophers too 
proud to submit themselves to the humility of  Christ.<<12>> 
Augustine appeals to Theodorus for an assessment of his 
advancement in philosophy. He expects help too as he 
submits this exercise in Christian dialectic to the 
philosophical wit of his friend.<<13>>
     Augustine goes on to recount what had happened 
since his nineteenth birthday. He refers to how 
Hortensius fired him with love for wisdom (tanto amore 
philosphiae succensus sum), his dalliance with 
astrology, a nine-year tenure with the Manichees, and a 
later infatuation with Academic skepticism. He mentions 
how the sermons of the Bishop (Ambrose) and Theodorus' 
words helped him to start thinking about God in 
spiritual terms rather than the crude corporeal image he 
had imagined since his boyhood. Then he notes one main 
impediment to his progress, namely, his desire for a 
wife and the love of honor. He makes the interesting 
admission that after reading the Platonists and 
comparing them with the scriptures he was all but ready 
to break his chains except for the esteem of certain 
people of repute.<<14>> Finally, he adds that he was rescued 
from his predicament by the onset of medical problems, 
chest pains (pectoris dolor), which allowed him to take 
the desired rest (optate tranquillitati). 
     Augustine refers to his circumstances at 
Cassiciacum as philosophical leisure. He can chart his 
course from the time of reading Hortensius in his 
nineteenth year through the many turns of his life right 
up to Cassiciacum. It is not exactly a straight course, 
but he believes he has arrived at a point where he can 
devote himself to philosophy. It appears from 
Augustine's comments here that he was ready to give up 
both marriage and honors when he encountered the 
Platonists and the scriptures, but held back only 
because of the possible offense he might cause to some 
well-placed individuals in Milan (nisi me nonnullorum 
hominum existimatio commoueret). But who were these 
people? And exactly what influence did they exert on the 
young Augustine that he delayed his turn to a life of 
philosophical leisure? Besides, how is this in any way 
related to the dramatic experience recounted in Bk. 8 of 
the Confessions?
     The account in De beata vita does not mention the 
anxiety that led to Augustine's visit to Simplicianus 
(Conf. 8.2.3). That part of Augustine's experience is 
elided from De beata vita 1.4, although in outline it is 
virtually identical with what Augustine offers in 
Confessions Bk. 7. The only possible allusion to his 
anxieties is the statement that he was hampered in his 
desire for philosophical retreat because of the esteem 
of certain individuals. But even this is too veiled. 
     An equally veiled outline is to be found at Contra 
Academicos 2.2.5. Here too Augustine speaks of his 
longing for philosophical retirement (2.2.4). He 
recalled how Romanianus had consoled him when Patricius 
died and how much that friendship had encouraged him 
towards the course that he was now pursuing at 
Cassiciacum. Augustine reminds Romanianus that during 
those difficult days he had always insisted that the 
truly happy life was one devoted to philosophical 
leisure, though he could not see abandoning his career 
because so many others depended on him. His longing had 
never been assuaged, and was set ablaze when certain 
books came into his hands. He no longer had any interest 
in honor, fame or the mitigation of this mortal 
existence. He sought better things. And the religion of 
his youth began to draw him back to his goal. The 
writings of Paul set him in the direction he had always 
longed for.<<15>> 
     The fascinating detail about Augustine's 
description in Contra Academicos is that he conceives 
the entire process, from beginning to end, as a 
philosophical pilgrimage. It is after his encounter with 
Paul that philosophy beckons him home (tunc . . . mihi 
philosophiae facies aperuit).<<16>> Augustine sets his 
experience in the framework established by Cicero's 
Hortensius: Catholic Christianity is the way to 
philosophy, the love of wisdom.
     Again Augustine leaves out any mention of a 
dramatic conversion. In fact, the pilgrimage could not 
be more straightforward. Here too the only intimation of 
difficulties comes in the oblique reference to the fact 
when he got hold of certain books he no longer desired 
honor and fame, and did not care to simply make a few 
amends to his life. But that is not saying very much in 
the way of drama. Like the narrative in De beata vita 
the account in Contra Academicos lacks the palpable 
regret one finds in Soliloquia, another one of the 
Cassiciacum dialogues, where the subject of Augustine's 
disavowal of marriage is more conspicuous. 
     "What about a wife?" Reason poses this question for 
Augustine. The response is emphatic. "However much you 
wish to paint her and to pile up on her every  
attraction, it will be of no account to me. I intend 
very much to be continent."   Augustine goes on:
I think that nothing unbars the door to a man's mind 
more than feminine charm and that contact with a woman's 
body which is so essential to having a wife. 
Consequently, if, as part of his duty, a wise man --who 
I have not yet discovered-- takes heed to have children 
and has sexual relations on account of this, as far as I 
am concerned, it is to be seen as an amazing thing, but 
no one should imitate him. For these dangers are able to 
beguile more than any happiness they might give. For 
this reason it is sufficient, I believe, rightly and 
profitably, for the freedom of my soul that I have 
ordered myself not to desire, not to seek, not to marry 
a wife.<<17>>
     Augustine's reasoning is based on the requirements 
of the philosophical life. And he finds it amazing that 
a wise man would consider having children as part of his 
duty and would then endure the great peril that is 
sleeping with a woman just for the sake of fulfilling 
his obligation. Augustine sees living with a woman as a 
great threat to intellectual life, it throws open the 
safe of a man's mind (ex arce deiciat animum virilem). 
However, reading between the lines the real problem 
seems to be one of self-control, the ability to guard 
the doorway of one's soul. So even though the 
philosophical rationale predominates, it is largely 
secondary to the self-legislation that Augustine has 
imposed on himself for the good of his soul (utiliter 
pro libertate animae meae). 
     Astonishingly, Augustine also unabashedly refers to 
wisdom as a woman, a lover, a theme that is at once 
biblical and Plotinian.<<18>> And as Reason tries to find 
out what kind of lover Augustine is a problem emerges.<<19>> 
Despite Augustine's confidence he is not quite healthy 
enough for all this talk about embracing wisdom in such 
a way that there is nothing that stands between them 
(nullo interposito velamento quasi nudam). He is soon 
reminded by Reason that for all his aplomb his life of 
continence is riddled with difficulties. In the previous 
days reflections he had sounded out confidently that a 
woman's embrace was too sordid a prospect to 
contemplate. And yet while he ruminated with himself 
during the night it all seemed so very different. 
Augustine continued to be tempted by the bitter 
sweetness (amara suavitas) of what he had so easily 
dismissed during the day.<<20>>
     "Be silent, I pray, be silent," Augustine pleads. 
"Why do you grieve me? Why do you dig and penetrate so 
deeply? I am already inured to tears. From now on I 
promise nothing, I presume nothing. Do not interrogate 
me about these things."<<21>> The dissonance between what he 
thinks he has achieved and the troubles that still 
plague him here in the Soliloquies adumbrate similar 
concerns in Bk. 10 of the Confessions.
     His troubles were far from over as he lay in bed at 
Cassiciacum. Still, Augustine had chosen continence over 
marriage and he intended to keep to that choice. The 
continuing distress about his life of continence 
demonstrates the peculiarity of Augustine's equation of 
continence and conversion in the months leading up to 
the dramatic scene in the garden in Milan (Conf. 8.8.19-
8.12.30). The highly textured fashion in which the 
Confessions portray Augustine's anxieties is essential 
to understanding this equation.

Continence and A Possible Conversion to Christianity

Augustine's conversion narrative proper begins in 
Confessions Bk. 7. In a retrospective, reminiscent of 
the account in De beata vita,  he recounts the various 
turns he had taken since adolescence: First the 
Manichees, then astrology, Academic skepticism, Neo-
Platonism, and finally Paul and the Scriptures. 
Chronologically he goes over material that he has 
already described in Bks. 4-6. However, Bk. 7 gives a 
coherent and tidy account of the various errors from 
which he was converted, preparing the way for the 
climactic overture in Bk. 8. Yet the intellectual 
odyssey in Bk. 7 seems to have little bearing on the 
theme of sexual renunciation which concludes Bk. 8. 
     In Bk. 7 Augustine speaks of the chains in which he 
was shackled as he sought desperately to find an answer 
for the question about the origin of evil. This was 
hardly an academic issue for him, he was suffering many 
inner torments which no one else knew.<<22>> Much of the 
language here tends to link his chains with pride, with 
the effect that his intellectual difficulties remain at 
the forefront. However, by linking the language of 
censure and self-deprecation with his desire to serve 
God and thereby master his body,<<23>> he offers a vague 
allusion that perhaps beside the managed air of 
intellectual problems that befuddle him there is another 
more fundamental problem. When he tries to work his way 
to think of God in non-corporeal terms other images seem 
to shout back, accusing him of being vile and unworthy 
(indigne et sordide).<<24>> 
     Augustine does not begin to unravel his existential 
crisis until the opening lines of Bk. 8, with 
intellectual certainties on the one hand and a 
vacillating will on the other:
Of thy eternal life I was now certain, though I saw it 
in a figure and as through a glass. Yet I ceased to 
doubt that there was an incorruptible substance, whence 
was all other substances; nor did I now [desire] to be 
more certain of Thee, but more steadfast in Thee. But 
for my temporal life, all was wavering, and my heart had 
to be purged from the old leaven. The Way, the Saviour 
Himself, well pleased me, but as yet I shrunk from going 
through its straitness.<<25>>
     So many people throng to the Church, but Augustine 
still leads a secular life (agabam in saeculo). The way 
seems too narrow, too constricting. Only now he has lost 
the desire for honor and attainment.<<26>> So he is doubly 
miserable, displeased with himself, and his life a 
burden to bear (oneri mihi). He cannot quite keep away 
from the Church, but as yet he is hesitant. He still 
finds himself chained, as it were, to his desire for a 
woman's embrace (sed adhuc tenaciter conligabar ex 
femina). 
     He adds that the apostle (that is, Paul) does not 
forbid him marriage (nec me prohibebat apostolus 
coniugari) but he finds himself so self-indulgent that 
he cannot attain to the higher calling of continence. 
And then he notes that Truth (that is Jesus) teaches him 
similarly, quoting Matthew 19.12 about those who make 
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God. All this is 
to show Augustine in a less than admirable position: he 
languishes in his weakness (ego imfirmior). It is an 
almost unrecognizable image of the man who had so 
adamantly urged against Alypius that for him marriage 
and a philosophical life went hand in hand, and moreover 
he could not envision a happy life without a woman's 
embrace (Conf. 6.13-14). Here, we catch a glimpse of his 
depression: 
But I being weak, chose the more indulgent place; and 
because of this alone, was tossed up and down in all 
beside, faint and wasted with withering cares, because 
in other matters I was constrained against my will to 
conform myself to a married life, to which I was given 
up and enthralled.<<27>>
     By this time Augustine had already been through the 
experience of seeing his first concubine sent back to 
Africa, and unwilling to observe continence he had taken 
another concubine (Conf. 6.15.25). In the meantime he 
waited to get married to someone of his own social class 
and rank. Although marriage was all but certain, 
Augustine seemed to be wearying of the idea. As we read 
him here, he seems to think that marriage is 
inconsistent with his conversion to Christianity. He 
acknowledges that he is not obliged to reject the 
married state, but he seems to think that marriage for 
him would be an honorable self-indulgence at best. 
     Augustine defines his problem in terms of the man 
in the parable in the Gospels who finds a pearl of great 
price and sells everything to acquire it. Except that in 
his case he hesitates.<<28>> And to Simplicianus he goes, 
desperate for help, desperate for resolution. He expects 
to be helped on the way because by dint of age and 
experience Simplicianus would know what proper course 
someone in Augustine's situation needed to take (unde 
mihi ut proferret uolebam conferentis secum aestus 
meos).<<29>> Augustine's emphasis here is on his uncertainty 
and lack of resolve (aestus).
     Sensing the opportunity to tell a conversion story 
that would appeal to Augustine's own situation, 
Simplicianus speaks about the conversion of his friend 
Marius Victorinus. Victorinus had had something like a 
text-book philosophical conversion of the sort that 
Augustine should have found congenial to his 
temperament, that is, if the intellectual odyssey was 
all there had been. But the much hoped for conversion 
does not happen. Upon hearing Victorinus' story 
Augustine expresses a wish to imitate him (exarsi ad 
imitandum).<<30>> But no sooner has he expressed the wish 
than he is brought to his senses to confront the reality 
that gnaws at him. We see Augustine again going over the 
nature of his anxiety, with an added comment that he 
found in himself the conflict between the flesh and the 
spirit spoken of by Paul (Gal 5; Rom 7-8). In his 
commentary on the events of that period Augustine now 
sees quite unmistakably the problem of the divided 
will.<<31>> He had responded with ardor to the story of 
Victorinus' conversion only to regress.
     Julian's ban, which compelled Victorinus to give up 
teaching, seemed propitious to Augustine because it 
allowed Victorinus to retire into philosophical leisure. 
Perhaps this is what Augustine would have wanted: a 
pretext of some sort to help him do what he thought 
needed doing. After all if he lacked one thing it was 
resolve, and anything which could get him there was 
welcome. Augustine's iron will held fast.<<32>> The desire 
to retire from his profession was in any event the 
lesser of his worries. 
My will the enemy held, and thence had made a chain for 
me, and bound me. For of a forward will, was a lust 
made; and a lust served became custom; and custom not 
resisted, became necessity. By which links, as it were, 
joined together (whence I called it a chain) a hard 
bondage held me enthralled. But that new will which had 
began to be in me, freely to serve Thee, and to wish to 
enjoy Thee, O God, the only assured pleasantness, was 
not yet able to overcome my former willfulness, 
strengthened by age. Thus did my two wills, one new, and 
the other old, one carnal, the other spiritual, struggle 
with me; and by their discord, undid my soul.<<33>>  
     By turns censorious and apologetic Augustine 
describes himself in Conf. Bk. 8 in terms of a conflict 
between two wills: one old, carnal and entrenched 
through years of habit and the other, new, spiritual and 
inchoate. Unable to follow the example set by a woman, 
he had the temerity to do even worse: take another 
concubine. To say that Augustine acted deplorably may 
seem overly harsh. Yet he seems to be passing that kind 
of judgment on his own past, and in doing so invites his 
interpreters to wonder to what extent the departure of 
his concubine may have been decisive for the terms in 
which he came to understand his possible conversion to 
Christianity. Exactly when and at what time he came to 
rethink what possible road he might take to becoming a 
full member of the church is not clear. What is beyond 
doubt is that sometime between the departure of his 
concubine and his conversion in 386 Augustine came to 
link his possible conversion to Christianity with sexual 
renunciation. More specifically, by the time he decides 
to pay a visit to Simplicianus (Conf. 8.1.1) Augustine 
has made the equation between conversion and continence.
     For all the anguish he must have endured Augustine 
was unusually deliberate. The slow progression towards 
resolution may also have prolonged his distress. He 
hesitated when he heard the story of Victorinus. Again 
he would hesitate when he hears the story of Anthony. 
The conversion of Victorinus seemed too sedate and too 
well-managed a change, despite the fact that culturally, 
intellectually and professionally Augustine share a good 
deal with him. There is scarcely a hint that Victorinus 
underwent anything like the deep emotional and 
psychological trauma of Augustine's.
     The stories told by Ponticianus were especially 
well suited for Augustine: the decisiveness of those two 
courtiers was what he needed. They had renounced the 
world for something more enduring. And they had done so 
just at the time in their careers when there were plying 
the very corridors of power and prestige in the Empire 
(Conf. 8.6.15). The effect on their own relations were 
almost immediate: the women to whom they were engaged 
also renounced the world, dedicating their virginity to 
God (dicauerunt etiam ipsae uirginitatem tibi). 
     Since his days as a Manichee, Augustine had never 
lost his fascination with exemplary lives. But what he 
was hearing now belonged to a different order. Hence the 
questions he vaguely remembers posing for Alypius: What 
is wrong with us? What is this you have heard? The 
unlearned rise up and take heaven by force, while we 
(look at us!) with all our learning are wallowing in 
flesh and blood. Is it because they have gone ahead that 
we are ashamed to follow? And do we feel no shame at not 
even following at all?"<<34>> Renunciation, continence, 
imitation and the shame of the learned and weak-willed 
who cannot do what the simple (indocti) dare to do: 
these are the issues around which Augustine's musings 
revolve. 
     The turning point began after Ponticianus left 
(Conf. 8.7.18). Augustine turned inward in a manner 
reminiscent of his Neo-Platonic contemplations in Bk. 7. 
What stands out here is the high moral awareness that 
Augustine brings to his introspection, which suggests 
that probably the most important thing he learned from 
his encounter with the Neo-Platonists, apart from his 
new found ability to think of non-material, spiritual, 
entities, was a vocabulary of inwardness and a moral 
consciousness which compelled him to even deeper 
introspection.      

     Earlier, I made the point that the intellectual 
problems had been resolved in favor of Christianity, and 
Augustine had no difficulty at Conf. 8.1 recognizing his 
ultimate good in the church. However, in De beata vita 
he wrote about delaying his philosophical retirement 
because of the esteem of some individuals in Milan, and 
he related that delay also to his desire for a wife. 
Before going any further I should like to suggest one 
possible way of construing this aspect of Augustine's 
problems in the context of the anxieties brought on by a 
possible marriage. 
     Having arrived at the conviction that Christian 
conversion required of him a life of sexual 
renunciation, Augustine recognized the need to abrogate 
the marriage he had all but contracted. In this 
situation only the courtesies of the aristocratic 
circles in Milan prevented him from doing what he 
thought necessary. It is highly doubtful that Augustine 
could have stayed in Milan after annulling the marriage, 
even if he had not dreamed of a philosophical 
retirement. It is doubtful too that the Milanese 
Christian aristocracy could endure what would have been 
perceived as an affront, a slight by the young 
rhetorician who had sought their patronage, and from an 
African no less. 
     In a world so conscious of social rank and the 
probity of one's actions towards one's patrons it would 
be reasonable for Augustine to worry about his 
reputation at this point. One even suspects that the 
apparently shrewd (though not altogether untruthful) way 
in which he resigned his chair may have been part of a 
general desire not to elicit any undue attention in his 
direction (Conf. 9.2.2-9.2.4). It would have been 
exciting to renounce rhetoric the way Victorinus had 
done, but for Augustine such a public disavowal of the 
old ways would have been too flaunting. He had not 
reached anyway near the status and reputation of 
Victorinus (another African) to go through so public a 
rejection of the old ways. Besides, turning down a 
proper marriage would not commend Augustine to the very 
well-connected families in Milan. A quiet retreat was 
reasonable and much to be desired.<<35>>
     These considerations may have added to Augustine's 
anxiety, but it still leaves out why he made the 
inextricable link between Christian conversion and 
sexual renunciation in the first place. Getting married 
need not have been so problematic unless Augustine had 
become convinced that there was something inherently 
wrong and unchristian about getting married in his 
current condition. Although De beata vita 1.4 implies 
that reading the Platonists had formed in him the 
conviction to disavow marriage, it does not account for 
the strength and force of that conviction. It is one 
thing to be suddenly enamored of the idea of total 
sexual renunciation because of the influence of Neo-
Platonic spirituality, it is quite another thing to be 
so convinced of this that it becomes a test of one's 
integrity. Augustine, the onetime champion of a life of 
philosophy which included marriage, must have had 
something more fundamental on his mind in order to even 
contemplate breaking an engagement to a daughter of the 
Milanese Christian aristocracy. Whatever it was, it cut 
very close to his being, and so required a drastic 
change in orientation.

Continence and Augustine's Inner Circle
The language of continence appears in one very telling 
reference to Ambrose. The mood is distant and almost 
academic. From his vantage point as a listener of 
Ambrose's sermons Augustine evaluates the Milanese 
Bishop's presence. Augustine does not seem to have found 
Ambrose's example relevant to his own life at the time 
--except perhaps in the negative sense that he felt  a 
strange sympathy for the man he admired but did not know 
personally, whose only trouble, he thought, was having 
to endure a life of sexual continence (caelibatus tantum 
eius mihi laboriosus videbatur).<<36>> Of Ambrose's celibacy 
he has only naive pity. 
     Even when Augustine talks about the danger that had 
engulfed him, a danger that Ambrose knew nothing of, 
Augustine appears to be talking of something other than 
incontinence. What he has in mind when he first 
encounters the visage of Ambrose is the skepticism of 
the Academics (Conf. 6.3.3). Having arrived in Rome a 
disconsolate Manichaean auditor, he now found himself a 
wholly disaffected Manichee and a skeptic. Shortly 
thereafter the Manichees would lose their tenuous hold 
on him, but the Catholics had not yet won. It is in this 
state of great uncertainty that Augustine sat in 
Ambrose's church. No longer a Manichee, but not yet a 
Catholic he was for the taking. While the Manichees had 
made him a materialist and something of a libertine in 
recognizing his responsibility for his own evils, the 
skepticism of the Academics<<37>> went to the root. They 
removed the very foundations of knowing. For the wise 
man there were to be no certainties, a pragmatism of 
suspended judgment was all one could hope for. Augustine 
would continue for the better part of his life 
negotiating the dialectic between reason and authority 
because of all this.<<38>> This and other questions he would 
have liked to pose to Ambrose who had very little time 
for the young rhetorician. 
     All the same, Ambrose's possible influence in the 
equation of conversion and sexual renunciation may have 
come in another way. It is more than likely that while 
Augustine may have considered Ambrose's celibacy an 
anomaly, that very anomaly may have been part of the 
complex of impressions that moved him to the position he 
came to hold eventually.<<39>> As we catch Augustine 
pondering the kind of inner conflicts that might well 
confound a man of Ambrose's reputation and stature we 
can sense already that the Bishop's personal life is 
beginning to be more than just a curiosity.<<40>> And it is 
not surprising that when he came to found his own 
monastic community later on in Hippo Regius Augustine 
would invoke Ambrose on many occasions. Possidius offers 
rare glimpses of how much Augustine referred to 
Ambrose's monastic example.<<41>> All this is the stuff of 
later years, no doubt. 
     As far as Augustine's pre-conversion experience is 
concerned it is difficult to pinpoint exactly in what 
way he appropriated Ambrose's example. Nor can we even 
be sure how Augustine would have responded to Ambrose's 
sermons in those moments when he presented sexual 
renunciation as the ideal of the Christian experience.<<42>>
     A lost work of Ambrose's, De sacramento 
regenerationis siue de philosophia, a copy of which 
Augustine had been able to obtain for study at about the 
time that he was writing the Confessions seems a most 
likely candidate to have influenced Augustine's 
position, if he had known it prior to his conversion.<<43>> 
The argument of the work would have met Augustine's 
problem head on: "the way of the philosophers is not the 
true way, it is not enough to know the truth, one must 
have in addition sacramental membership in the Christian 
church."<<44>> It is an unusual argument. Moreover, Ambrose 
upped the ante. 
Ambrose found it polemically necessary and useful to 
counter the claims of the philosophers to have achieved 
a higher standard of moral life by their chastity; 
'continence is the pedestal on which right worship 
rests', says Ambrose.<<45>>
     For someone in Augustine's position Ambrose's 
robust, "masculine" Christianity would have been 
congenial if a bit too rigorous in its aims: he who 
would take on true philosophy, he who would venture on 
the road to Christian philosophy, ought to prove by his 
life of continence the superiority of Christianity.<<46>> 
Construed this way Ambrose's De sacramento 
regenerationis siue philosophia would reach Augustine as 
another "firing-me-up-for-philosophy" book, along the 
lines of Cicero's Hortensius. Or, failing that, 
Augustine could have received it like the Platonicorum 
libros which had precipitated one of his many 
conversions.
     That Augustine does not mention Ambrose's text in 
the Confessions is a bit unusual since he has been at 
pains to indicate his philosophical and theological 
debts, not only to Cicero, but to the Platonists, and 
even other lesser figures who had been instrumental in 
turning him away from one error or another. What is 
more, he does not overlook Ambrose's influence in 
helping him gain a better handle on the problem of 
interpreting the Bible. In addition, he speaks about 
continence in reference to Ambrose and appears to have 
been naively unimpressed, so it would be very odd to 
have taken the decisive actions in response to Ambrose's 
text without acknowledging it in any way. Had he been 
moved towards continence and baptism by this lost work, 
it would have been a fitting denouement to his earlier 
assessment of Ambrose's celibacy. The absence of any 
reference to this lost work in the Confessions is 
therefore a bit of a problem.
     But there is something else. Augustine rarely, if 
ever, uses the superiority of Christian asceticism as an 
argument against the philosophers. He reserves much of 
that ammunition for the Manichees, the first installment 
of which comes in De moribus ecclesiae Catholicae. As 
for the philosophers, and the Platonists in particular, 
he continues to praise them even as late as the writing 
of De civitate Dei. His main objection against them is 
their pride and lack of humility, not their 
unwillingness or inability to undertake rigorous 
asceticism. When he does criticize the philosophers, as 
we find him doing in De civitate Dei, Augustine chides 
them for having acquiesced to the religious practices of 
Roman society despite the high claims of their 
philosophies. It would be an intriguing idea if indeed 
Augustine is taking up a challenge put forth by Ambrose 
for those who would seek the happy life. However, the 
unfolding of the narrative in the Confessions seems to 
point in a direction away from Ambrose. 
     There had always been the personal example of 
Alypius. If there was a model that Augustine had had 
before him for a good part of his life it was Alypius. 
Part of the Alypius portrait in the Confessions prepares 
the way for the whole problem of marriage, sexual 
renunciation and the desire for philosophical rest. In 
the midst of all their concerns about worldly honors 
(Conf. 6.6) Augustine and his friends sought a way of 
life, a true guide for their troubled souls. They had 
hoped to find it in philosophical leisure. The plan 
faltered because they were sure the women would not 
agree to the arrangement. 
     Augustine tells us that Alypius prevented him from 
marrying because they feared losing the intimacy of 
their friendship.<<47>> But in his studied intransigence 
against Alypius Augustine continued to maintain that the 
pursuit of wisdom did not rule out a woman's love or 
even a wife. Alypius almost lost his ground when 
curiositas got the better of him, trying to figure out 
exactly what made Augustine's desire for a woman such a 
necessity.<<48>> If Ambrose's De philosophia helped in any 
way it brought Augustine back to the views Alypius had 
always maintained. 
      It is a measure of Augustine's stubborn will that 
he could keep on living the way he did with Alypius for 
a friend and Monnica for a mother. While Alypius was 
making no headway and faltering while trying to 
understand Augustine, Monnica's arrival in Milan would 
prove more precipitous. When she arrived she saw 
Augustine nearer her Catholic faith than ever she had 
seen him, and so meant to help her son on the way. 
Marriage seemed a good idea to make Augustine's passage 
less turbulent. Monnica knew better than to suggest 
continence as the way for Augustine. 
     Augustine's concubine would be the casualty of 
Monnica's intervention. Augustine had lived with his 
concubine for about fourteen years in virtual defiance 
of his mother. When Monnica took the lead in arranging 
for a proper marriage for him the period of Augustine's 
defiance appeared to have come to an abrupt end. The 
language describing his attitude towards Monnica's 
intervention are much too passive, suggesting that 
Augustine may not have reached this judgment on his own 
initiative, and would probably not have taken decisive 
steps without the urging of his mother.<<49>> 
     With the departure of his concubine a mist descends 
on Augustine's soul. In this state of uncertainty about 
a possible marriage Augustine asks his mother to pray to 
God for a vision about the future he was embarking on. 
What else explains Augustine's anxiety about marriage 
than the desire for dreams?<<50>> His youthful fascination 
with astrology may have reared its ugly head as he 
sought desperately to know his future. Monnica 
apparently did have some dreams but they were of such a 
nature that she did not think much of them. Augustine, 
in his usual sense of tact, does not say what they were; 
only that Monnica assured her that she could always tell 
which dreams were from God and which ones were simply 
the products of her own anxieties, fears and imaginings. 
Perhaps one should not be surprised at Monnica here. 
What is surprising is that Augustine sought such 
assurances. And it appears to be the first indication of 
trouble (Conf. 6.13.23). 
     Augustine's depression continued. The helpless 
creature of habit had meant to weather the storm by 
taking another concubine, as he waited to be married. 
But he found himself deeply troubled. By the time we 
meet him at Conf. Bk. 8.6.13 he is in the throes of his 
anxieties, distraught over the prospect of having to 
consider a life of continence as an essential aspect to 
his possible conversion to Christianity.<<51>> The issue now 
is whether Augustine will make the choice for 
continence.

Continence and the Portrait of a Nameless Woman
In a curious transposition, much in keeping with his 
earlier depiction of wisdom as a lover, Augustine 
portrays continence as a woman beckoning him to a life 
of renunciation. But, Continence is not alone in her 
enticements. Augustine's former loves are just as 
solicitous, continually reminding him of his past, 
whispering in his ears, taunting him that he just does 
not have what it takes to venture on a life of chastity. 
"Can you live without us?" they cry.<<52>>
     Augustine drags his feet, hesitates, ponders, then 
inches a bit closer to his goal. Eventually Continence 
succeeds. Her inducements are more appealing to 
Augustine: "In the direction toward which I had turned 
my face and still trembled to take the last step, I 
could see the chaste dignity of Continence; she was calm 
and serene, cheerful without wantonness, and it was in 
truth and honor that she was enticing me to come to her 
without hesitation, stretching out to receive and to 
embrace me with those holy hands of hers, full of such 
multitudes of good examples."<<53>> Then he goes on to point 
out the examples that Continence showed him: men and 
women, young and old, virgins and widows who had devoted 
themselves to her. Yet it should not have been such a 
great number. 
     After all, Augustine knew very little indeed of the 
various traditions of Christian asceticism prior to 
Ponticianus' visit. He came to know about Anthony of 
Egypt from what Ponticianus had told him. Even Ambrose's 
community in Milan was news just received. So the 
examples are at best second-hand, based on Ponticianus, 
and perhaps Augustine's recollections of certain 
individuals he may have seen in Milan. The example of 
renunciation closest to him which had any pretensions 
towards asceticism was that of his concubine, the mother 
of Adeodatus. If continence is presenting herself as a 
woman and showing Augustine examples of those who have 
chosen her way, what more likely candidate for such fair 
than the woman who had made a vow of sexual renunciation 
after years of living with Augustine? But note what 
happens at Conf. 8.7.18 and 8.8.19, just when Augustine 
begins to consider the implications of what he had heard 
from Ponticianus:
So I was being gnawed at inside, and as Ponticianus went 
on with his story I was lost and overwhelmed in a 
terrible kind of shame. When the story was over and the 
business about which he had come had been settled he 
went away, and I retired into myself. . . . And now 
inside my house great indeed was the quarrel which I had 
started with my soul in that bedroom of my heart which 
we shared together.<<54>> 
     The language evokes the image of something like the 
inner chamber of a Roman house (cubiculo nostro, corde 
meo). Whether all this is intended to evoke the memory 
of his concubine is hard to say. Yet one cannot overlook 
the language in which Augustine describes his relations 
with the mother of his son. Augustine's words reveal a 
strangely disquieting dignity, especially because the 
concubine appears in contrast to Monnica. At no point in 
his account about Monnica's life does Augustine's mother 
look so unendearing.   
     If modern readers have shown remarkable sympathy 
for the mother of Adeodatus and have tended to see 
Augustine (and his mother) as mean and heartless that is 
due largely to Augustine himself. It is his text, his 
portrait of the nameless woman, and his juxtaposition of 
those two women that engenders sympathy for the one and 
surprise at the other. On the scale of imperfection 
Monnica seems to be at the high end with Augustine 
somewhere in the middle; confused, dejected and put 
upon. Augustine does not say "I broke off my 
relationship with her."<<55>> That at least would imply that 
while he was in great anguish over the decision he did 
it himself. What we read is: "she was torn from me." 
Passive, weak-willed and forlorn, all Augustine can say 
is that "my heart clung to her." Augustine's words are 
much too emotional, and may even be a bit of an 
embarrassment for someone who should have known 
better.<<56>> The description of the separation also bears 
all the marks of Monnica's handiwork. However one looks 
at it Augustine points the finger of blame at Monnica 
and also at himself.
     What do we make of all this? An advancing 
rhetorician who is saddened at losing a concubine. For a 
late antique audience this would be overly dramatic. 
Many a man had gotten rid of a concubine and no one 
seemed (except the women of course) the worse for it. To 
his contemporaries --if we understand the tragic world 
of late Roman marriage protocol-- Augustine should have 
felt nothing of the loss he describes. For him to decry 
that "she was separated from me because she was thought 
to be an obstacle to my marriage and my heart which 
clung to her was dripping blood" is a bit too pathetic a 
picture of the young Augustine.<<57>> There is too much 
anguish here. And to his contemporaries and his modern 
readers he is difficult to comprehend. Whether or not we 
should follow some translators in saying that Augustine 
loved her58 is another matter. Augustine describes her 
as simply, "the woman I was in the habit of sleeping 
with" (qua cubare solitus eram).
     Augustine gives no indication that on his own he 
had quite worked out in his mind that this was the cause 
he was going to take: marriage and then baptism. Nor is 
it clear that he had considered how a possible Christian 
conversion would impose on his relationship with his 
concubine. Had he ever thought he could take her into 
the Church? Would Ambrose condone such practice when he 
was holding up celibacy as the ideal?<<59>> 
     In an environment where married Christians felt 
like second-class citizens it is highly doubtful that 
Augustine would have felt secure in thinking that he 
could keep his concubine. However, if he had no 
intention of receiving baptism and wanted to wait as 
long as it was possible then he could well remain on the 
fringes of the Christian community for a very long time 
indeed. 
     Ironically, the same Augustine who could not be 
constrained in his career by an early marriage in his 
youth found himself in his early thirties considering 
marriage as the only way into the life of the Church. In 
both instances Monnica's wishes predominate. Earlier she 
had unwittingly acquiesced to Augustine's profligacy, 
now she took the decisive steps to get him married only 
to watch her son slip in his tenuous steps toward 
marriage and Christian baptism.
     The impending legal marriage, the departure of the 
concubine, and the taking of another woman all made 
Augustine's situation unbearable. And Augustine was not 
helped by the vow of his first concubine that she would 
not give herself to another man. It would have been 
easier on a man of such introspection if she had not 
made such a pledge. But she did, and it placed Augustine 
in a dubious position. She returned to Africa, but the 
unhappy, impatient, and weak-willed Augustine was in 
agony. 
I, in my misery, could not follow the example of a 
woman. I had two years to wait until I could have the 
girl to whom I was engaged, and I could not bear the 
delay. So, since I was not so much a lover of marriage 
as a slave of lust, I found another woman for myself --
not, of course, as a wife. In this way my soul's disease 
was fed and kept alive so that it might reach the 
domination of matrimony just as strong as before, or 
stronger, and still the slave of unbroken habit. Nor was 
the wound healed which had been made by cutting off my 
previous [concubine]. It burned, it hurt intensely, and 
then it festered, and if the pain became duller, it 
become more desperate.<<60>>
     And so Augustine began in search of a cure for the 
disease of his soul. Notice the contrast between 
Adeodatus' mother's vow of continence (not to give 
herself to another man) and Augustine's impatience and 
inability to follow the woman's example. Whether she had 
intended to influence Augustine in this way we will  
never know. At the same time there must have been a note 
of desperation in the concubine's vow. She had arrived 
in Milan probably just about the time when Augustine had 
set up house and had to leave shortly after Monnica's 
arrival. In many ways it would have been better not to 
have come to Milan at all.   
     Although it would appear that Monnica had displaced 
the mother of Adeodatus, the taking of another concubine 
by Augustine raised questions about how far Monnica 
could determine the manner in which Augustine entered 
the Church. At this juncture control slips from both of 
them. Monnica had arranged a marriage, the first 
concubine had been sent packing, but Augustine was still 
sleeping with a woman who was not his wife.
     Monnica's worries may have intensified here, but 
Augustine says nothing about them. The willingness with 
which she accepts Augustine's final act of conversion 
(Conf. 8.12.30) not only to God but to continence 
suggests that Monnica had been aware of the terms in 
which Augustine framed his possible conversion to 
Christianity. His ongoing prodigality made Augustine's 
fidelity in a monogamous relationship with the mother of 
Adeodatus for those fourteen years or so look much more 
decent. Augustine's youthful prayer "give me continence 
but not yet" (Conf. 8.7.17) seemed an apt description of 
his current condition, but in fact it belonged to 
another kind of experience altogether. For at that time 
Augustine had not had several years of living in 
fidelity with a woman. 
     A number of interesting questions emerge at this 
point. If an attempt had not been made to get him 
married properly, would Augustine have stumbled on the 
idea that he had a terrible wound for which he needed a 
cure? Would he have linked Christian conversion with 
sexual renunciation had he been able to enter the fold 
of the Church with his concubine? And what would have 
been the shape of Augustine's views on human sexuality? 
These are speculations to be sure, but they warrant 
reflection because of the variegated ways in which 
Augustine's personal experiences enter into his 
theological thought.
     This particular episode in Augustine's life 
determined a few important aspects of his later life. 
The mother of Adeodatus had not only pledged herself to 
a life of continence, she had made the vow to God, the 
same God the young rhetorician wanted to be converted 
to. Augustine was left to deal with the implications of 
his concubine's vow. The bonds of their relationship 
would become an issue.
     When Augustine came to write his treatise "On the 
Good of Marriage" in 401, soon after finishing the 
Confessions he had occasion to reflect on a situation 
that in every way recalled his own circumstances with 
the mother of his son. The language, sentiments, and 
allusions are almost certainly self-referential: 
This problem often arises: if a man and a woman live 
together without being legitimately joined, not to have 
children, but because they could not observe continence; 
and if they have agreed between themselves to have 
relations with no one else, can this be called a 
marriage? Perhaps: but only if they had resolved to 
maintain until death the good faith which they had 
promised themselves, even though this union did not rest 
on a desire to have children. . . . But if one or the 
other of these conditions is lacking, I cannot see how 
their alliance can be called a marriage. Indeed, if a 
man takes a woman only for a time, until he has found 
another who better suits his rank and fortune: and if he 
marries this woman, as being of the same class, this man 
would commit adultery in his heart, not towards the one 
he had married, but toward her with whom he had once 
lived without being legitimately married. The same can 
be said for the woman . . . . Nevertheless, if she was 
faithful to him, and if, after his marriage to another, 
she herself gave no thought to marriage, but abstained 
from all sexual relations, I would not dare to accuse 
her of adultery --even though she may have been guilty, 
in living with a man who was not her husband.<<61>>
     It is instructive that in his assessment here 
Augustine exonerates the concubine who abstains from all 
sexual relations after she has been let go by a man to 
whom she was not properly married. He would not dare to 
accuse her of adultery. And indeed Augustine did not 
dare to accuse the mother of Adeodatus, and spoke rather 
of the example she had set him (Conf. 6.15.25).  
     If even an inkling of any of this understanding 
formed part of Augustine's thinking between the time of 
his concubine's departure and his conversion in 386 we 
would have the surest explanation of Augustine 
situation: a proper marriage to another woman who fit 
"his rank and fortune" would imply in Augustine's mind 
that he was living in adultery. This would be sufficient 
to bring Augustine to the position where he came to 
believe that continence was a necessary corollary to his 
conversion to Christianity. 
     The almost cursory reference to the example set by 
the concubine (ego infelix nec feminae imitator) makes 
it all too easy to overlook this model of continence in 
Augustine's inner circle. Augustine could see in her act 
the resolve he found terribly lacking in himself. They 
had lived together. On the question of habits they would 
bear the same burden. The woman's decision to be 
celibate for the rest of her life, demonstrated what 
Augustine was unable to do for himself or for another's 
sake. Living with a new concubine and "sinning all the 
while" (interea mea peccata multiplicabantur)<<62>> 
Augustine seems to have recognized the necessity of a 
decisive act of renunciation. The example of the two 
courtiers of Trier would not be lost on him.
     There had always been Alypius, of course. But 
Alypius appeared to Augustine as something of a 
different species, so that even when Alypius follows him 
in conversion Augustine can still say that Alypius is 
simply following what is right in his character 
(congruentissimo suis moribus).<<63>> Alypius knew nothing 
of the chains formed by habit. For Augustine habit had 
led directly to his chains. So we come full circle: the 
man who had earlier looked at Ambrose with pity arrived 
at a point where he could now look on the Bishop of 
Milan as the more fortunate, because he was not bound by 
any chains. 
     
     Much of what I have tried to suggest here is that 
Augustine's emerging conviction cannot be properly 
accounted for without recognizing the role of his first 
concubine's vow to continence. The language of adultery 
which shows up in De bono coniugali 5.5 makes sense only 
if Augustine came to recognize, quite apart from the 
allowances which Roman society accorded men and their 
concubines, that the mother of Adeodatus had been in 
every sense his wife. Consequently, to go through with 
the legal marriage to the Milanese girl would be adding 
more sin to an already ignoble record. 
     There is also a pastoral issue worth noting. 
Augustine would not have had the integrity, nor would he 
have had the audacity to chide the men in his 
congregation over and over again about their 
infidelities, about their adulterous lives (because some 
insisted on keeping concubines), if Augustine had 
shrugged off his relationship with his concubine as 
something excusable and therefore incidental to his 
conversion to Christianity.<<64>> Perhaps, if the concubine 
had not been dismissed on the pretext that she was an 
impediment to Augustine's conversion then Augustine 
could have approached his possible conversion to 
Christianity on slightly different terms. But there is 
patent irony all over this story. Augustine could 
dissolve the relationship with the mother of Adeodatus 
on only two grounds. One, if he wanted to live a life of 
continence, and two, if he wished to marry someone else 
befitting his status. There were no other options. 
Consequently, when the concubine chose continence, she 
had unwittingly committed Augustine to follow suit, that 
is, if Augustine wanted to be converted to Christianity. 
Under the circumstances his belated response was all but 
certain. If he wanted to be converted to Christianity he 
could not go through with the marriage because that 
would mean living in adultery. Augustine took the only 
doorway into the Church left open for him.

Vovens Tibi and the Idea of Conversion in the Confessions
Thus far I have referred in various ways to conversion 
without defining exactly what I mean. In this I have 
been following Augustine's usage. I have also assumed 
all along that the concubine's vow and Augustine's 
description of it should be recognized as a conversion 
story, one of the many conversion narratives that dot 
the landscape of the Confessions. Now I will attempt to 
make a case for it. It may be objected that the claim to 
conversion for his concubine rests on a simple vow, but 
such an objection would be presuming on what conversion 
is in the first place. The crucial question to ask is 
what Augustine means to convey by vovens tibi?  
     Augustine's idea of his own conversion seems 
obvious enough because at Conf. 8.12.30 he says so 
explicitly (conuertisit enim me ad te). This notion of 
conversion is the most common use of conuersio in the 
Confessions. It is God who is doing the turning. In a 
good many of these instances Augustine is either quoting 
from scripture or commenting on the various turns which 
God gave to his life, sometimes over and against his 
best wishes at the time.<<65>>
     Van Fleteren's count of conversion narratives in 
the Confessions includes such stories as Augustine's 
encounter with Cicero's Hortensius  (Conf. 3.4.7-8), 
Alypius' conversion from the Carthaginian circus (Conf. 
6.7.11-12), Augustine's conversion from astrology (Conf. 
7.6.8-10), and Monnica's decision not to drink wine 
(Conf. 9.8.19).<<66>> We could even add to the count 
Alypius' change of mind about his Appollinarianism while 
in Milan (Conf. 7.19.25), or more to the point, the much 
earlier narrative about Augustine's boyhood friend who 
received baptism when he was deathly ill, had a 
remission, and then died shortly thereafter while 
Augustine was away (Conf. 4.4.8). 
     This last example, besides offering a witness to 
the practice of baptism for those who were thought to be 
near death, greatly affected Augustine in another way. 
The change that seemed to have come over his friend, who 
could not endure Augustine's mocking of the rite, offers 
an interesting example of what may well have been a 
crisis conversion. That he died a few days afterwards 
cut the story short. Still, Augustine appears to have 
been greatly shattered by the alienation that entered 
their friendship, an alienation that deepened with the 
death of his friend. There is the anguish of unfinished 
business --things that should have been said that were 
never said-- which linger in Augustine's grief over his 
friend (Conf. 4.4.9ff.). Augustine the mocker stood on 
the outside looking in on an experience in which he 
could not share. 
     Without knowing what had been done to him --this 
was the  point Augustine had tried to stress by 
belittling the rite-- Augustine's boyhood friend seemed 
to have changed his own attitude toward baptism when he 
regained consciousness.<<67>> In recounting this experience 
Augustine pits his own foolishness against the sudden, 
unexpected, and newfound freedom of his friend (mirabili 
et repentina libertate), who found the voice and the 
authority to take Augustine to task. This was probably 
the surest indication to the young Augustine that 
something had taken place.<<68>> Something astonishing 
(mirabili) had happened. To recognize a conversion in 
this earlier narrative about Augustine's boyhood friend 
is to inch a bit closer to what one can expect in the 
story of his concubine. There are far too many 
similarities between the two stories.
     What do I mean? First, there is the simple fact 
that the central characters in both stories (Conf. 4.4.8 
and 6.15.25) are nameless, but this is the least 
interesting of the similarities. We never find out the 
name of Augustine's boyhood friend, nor are we told 
anywhere in Augustine's corpus the name of his 
concubine. Second, each story deals with a crisis 
situation for the protagonist and for Augustine too. 
Third, in each instance, the precipitating event leads 
to some unfinished business between Augustine and the 
persons involved. In the former, baptism creates a 
barrier between Augustine and his friend, in the latter, 
Augustine's impending marriage and the forced separation 
from the concubine is itself the barrier. In death his 
boyhood friend is lost to Augustine and we never find 
out whether Augustine knew what happened to his 
concubine or whether he even cared to find out. 
     Fourth, God enters the respective stories at 
precisely the points where Augustine is alienated. His 
boyhood friend receives baptism and thereby enters the 
Church, the concubine makes a vow to God to live a life 
of continence. In either case the other person involved 
adopts a rite and a form of life that Augustine mocks or 
is incapable of imitating. It is tempting to think that 
Augustine does not get reconciled to either his boyhood 
friend or his concubine until the day of his conversion 
in 386 when, in a curious way, he embraces continence 
and prepares himself for baptism. Fifth, in each 
circumstance we find Augustine inconsolable. He sheds a 
lot of tears in the aftermath of his friend's death and 
after the departure of his concubine. When his friend 
died he could endure his native town no longer and fled 
to Carthage to overcome his misery, plunged headlong 
into new friendships yet found no rest. Similarly, when 
his concubine departs he tries to soften the blow by 
seeking the embrace of another woman. Instead what he 
discovers is a misery much deeper and more intolerable.
     The similarities between the stories suggests 
perhaps that if there is a crisis conversion in the 
former, made explicit because Augustine's boyhood friend 
received baptism and appears to have accepted the 
implications of the rite, there may also have been a 
crisis conversion of another kind in the vow of his 
concubine. Beyond this we may not press too far. But 
there is another parallel worth remembering. When the 
two courtiers of Trier renounced the world in their 
conversion to Christianity they left their respective 
fiancŽes in marital limbo. And what did the two women 
do? As Augustine tells us, they followed suit, 
dedicating their chastity to God (dicauerunt etiam ipsae 
uirginitatem tibi). In this respect the dicauerunt . . . 
tibi  of the two betrothed women covers the same 
semantic range as the vovens tibi of Augustine's 
concubine.
     The helplessness of Augustine's concubine --and she 
was helpless-- does not in any way detract from the 
personal conviction that may have been involved in the 
act. Exactly how she may have lived the rest of her life 
is not the issue. She may well have been returning to a 
precarious existence. And the desire for continence may 
have been an attempt to give dignity to her 
hopelessness: covering her shame in a declared act of 
renunciation that would lend to her life a "divine" or 
religious purpose.<<69>> Whatever may have been her 
prospects she obviously intended to set the terms in 
which she would endure that future. It is in this 
minimal sense of making a decided choice, all be it in a 
desperate situation, that underlines her act of 
renunciation. That the vow was also made to God greatly 
qualifies how she appears to have understood herself. 
     Furthermore, the narrator (or rather, the praying 
voice) of the Confessions, on whose words we are 
dependent for the portrait of the nameless woman, 
appears to have believed that she made the vow to the 
very God to whom he was confessing. There may also be a 
biblical allusion here: there are any number of nameless 
women in the gospels who are commended for their faith. 
Since Augustine recognized his concubine's vow to 
continence as an example he was to weak and unhappy to 
follow at the time, his later acceptance of that way of 
life should be acknowledged as a witness to the 
influence of his concubine on the choice he came to 
make. 
     The Confessions make an implicit claim as a meta-
narrative of conversion. It is not only Augustine's 
story but the stories of Victorinus, Ponticianus, the 
two courtiers, Anthony of Egypt, Ambrose, Simplicianus, 
Monnica, and, as I am inclined to think, the mother of 
Adeodatus. There are as many kinds of conversion 
narratives in the Confessions as there are people who 
are converted. To aver that any one of these conversion 
stories is the most fitting representation of Christian 
conversion in the Confessions is simply misleading.
     Monnica, for example, had always offered one 
version of Christian experience to Augustine. 
Nevertheless, the portrait we have of Monnica is not a 
simple one, still less does it fit our common notions of 
hagiography. The image we seem to carry with us is the 
Monnica of Bk. 9, where Augustine speaks eloquently of 
the woman whose labors had given birth to him naturally 
and spiritually. Augustine states that he is passing 
over so much of what God has done for him because he is 
in hurry. But he refuses to pass over what he has to 
offer about God's servant, his mother.<<70>> And so we have 
a tribute to Monnica. 
     It is all too easy to forget that Augustine gives 
us another side of Monnica in Conf. Bks. 1-8 which is in 
every way as critical of Monnica's worldliness as it is 
laudatory of the gift of God in her. She is, after all, 
the mother who cared so much about Augustine's career 
that she was willing to endure her son's profligate 
youth as long as the brilliant young man stayed the 
course for success; the same woman whose love for his 
son appears to the middle-aged Augustine to have been a 
bit inordinate at times; the same person who, for good 
or ill, compelled Augustine to sever his relationship 
with his concubine in lieu of a marriage that the pious 
Monnica had the dominant hand in arranging; the same 
Christian woman who also underwent a conversion of sorts 
from her worldliness at the conversion of her son, 
giving up her desire for grandchildren. 
     It is after Monnica's conversion to a joy  more 
pure and chaste that she enters the last phase of her 
life captured by such moments as her contributions at 
Cassiciacum (see especially her role in De beata vita) 
and the so-called vision at Ostia. Augustine had always 
recognized Monnica as a Christian and she remained that 
till the end. Yet as he describes a conversion for 
Monnica in late life Augustine also underlines Christian 
experience as always in need of perfecting. Conversion, 
in this sense, is an ongoing event. By recounting 
different kinds of conversion experiences Augustine 
points out that the path towards perfection are various.  
     Ponticianus did not become a monk, yet he saw 
himself as a Christian in good standing, while his two 
colleagues turned to the monastic life. Victorinus had 
given up his past ways and become a Christian, yet he 
remained a philosopher. Monnica had been a married 
woman, Ponticianus was serving in the imperial 
administration, Ambrose was a celibate Bishop reigning 
in Milan, preaching to both the simple and the 
sophisticates of that society. 
     Simple vows of renunciation were turning people 
into ascetics. And many of these were considered by 
Augustine and the Christian society of the late fourth 
and early fifth century as genuine manifestations of 
Christian conversion.<<71>> If individuals were turning 
their backs on the world in simple vows of renunciation, 
then a vow to the Christian God made by a helpless woman 
on the verge of possible destitution ought to be seen as 
a conversion. If we simply accept the fact that there 
are various kinds of conversion stories in the 
Confessions, then there is little reason to doubt that 
the concubine's vow is also a conversion story. All I 
have tried to point out is that it is a muted conversion 
narrative, a veiled tribute to a woman whose decision to 
commit herself to a life of continence had prompted 
Augustine's journey down that road. By recognizing the 
mother of Adeodatus, the woman with whom he was in the 
habit of sleeping, as "flesh of his flesh" Augustine the 
catechumen come to see in sexual renunciation the only 
credible embodiment of his possible conversion to 
Christianity.  

     Let me conclude with the observation that the 
silences about Augustine's dramatic conversion in his 
early writings could well be due to just what I have 
been describing here, and perhaps De beata vita 1.4 
alludes to this. Although we have come to form the idea 
--and a rather erroneous one-- that Augustine is very 
open about the inner details of his life, he 
deliberately omits a good many things we would very much 
like to have in the Confessions. And there is no mention 
of a concubine in De beata vita. We need to consider the 
very real possibility that Augustine had never intended 
to give the details of his life to the world. The 
Confessions, after all, is a highly selective 
retrospective of his life and an unusual example of the 
discipline of memory. That most curious passage about 
how he selected from memory what he wanted for his text 
(Conf. 10.8.12) reveals a thoroughgoing discipline and 
mastery of his material. Augustine is always in control. 
     If the terms in which he came to understand his 
possible conversion to Christianity (i.e. the equation 
of conversion and continence) had something to do with 
the vow of his concubine one would hardly expect 
Augustine to introduce the subject when he was trying to 
tell his story in the form of a conversion to 
philosophical leisure. The guarded, tactful language of 
a philosophical pilgrimage which one finds in the early 
writings allows Augustine to gloss over a good many 
aspects of his conversion. We should probably not be too 
surprised that the dramatic conversion scarcely shows up 
in the early works. 
     Of the Cassiciacum dialogues the Soliloquies  
offers the most interesting corroboration of the 
intensely emotional and traumatic experience that 
Augustine recounts in the Confessions. We can see 
Augustine entering into himself to dredge out his 
anxieties all over again. His inability to embrace 
Sapientia is linked to his remembrance of things past, 
of how much the bitter sweetness of a woman's embrace 
still haunts him. 
     Continentia and Sapientia emerge as Augustine's new 
loves, although at times he appears to have a very 
tenuous hold on the former. Augustine can only think of 
Continence in connection with the many tears he shed 
during the trauma of his conversion. And while he 
appears tired of crying when Reason continues to probe 
and dig deeply into his being, nothing quite captures 
the intensely affective nature of Augustine's 
spirituality as the many tears he continued to shed to 
the very end of his life, weeping for his sin and 
seeking the mercy of God.<<72>> 
     In this Augustine was anything but the model of the 
philosophical pilgrim. Tears were hardly the mark of the 
philosopher in late antiquity. For all his attempts to 
present his conversion as a philosophical pilgrimage the 
portrait of his soul that we find in the Soliloquies 
undermines that very effort. Hence the relevance of his 
comment in the Confessions that the Cassiciacum 
dialogues have something of the old air in them: pride 
(Conf. 9.4.7). All the same, to understand Augustine's 
attempt to lay hold of Continentia and Sapientia is to 
come close to the heart of his Christianity, especially 
in the early years after his conversion. And to think 
that a helpless, nameless woman had something to do with 
all this is remarkable in itself.

NOTES

1    Conf. 8.12.30 (CCSL 27, 132): Conuertisti enim me 
ad te, ut nec uxorem quaererem nec aliquam spem saeculi 
huius stans in ea regula fidei, in qua me ante tot annos 
ei reuelaueras, et conuertisti luctum eius in gaudium 
multo uberius, quam uoluerat, ut multo carius atque 
castius, quam de nepotibus carnis meae requirebat. 

2    The Confessions of St. Augustine, translated by Rex 
Warner (New York: Mentor Books, 1963), 183. 

3    See especially Conf. Bks. 1 & 2.

4    A sampling of recent studies include L. Daly, 
"Psychohistory and St. Augustine's Conversion Process," 
Augustiniana 28 (1978), 231-254; P. Fredriksen, "Paul 
and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox 
Traditions, and the Retrospective Self," JTS, NS 37 
(1986) 3-34; T. J. Van Bavel, "De la Raison ˆ la Foi: La 
Conversion d'Augustin, Augustiniana 36 (1986), 5-27; and 
a host of articles by L. C. Ferrari, "Paul at the 
Conversion of Augustine (Conf. VIII. 12, 29-30)," Aug. 
Stud. 11 (1980), 5-20; The Conversions of St. Augustine, 
The Saint Augustine Lecture Series: St. Augustine and 
the Augustinian Tradition, 1982 (Villanova: University 
Press, 1984); "Saint Augustine on the Road to Damascus," 
Aug. Stud. 13 (1982), 151-170; "Truth and Augustine's 
Conversion Scene," Collectanea Augustiniana (New York: 
Peter Lang, 1990), 11-19. 
     The recent monograph by Colin Starnes, Augustine's 
Conversion, A Guide to the Argument of Confessions I-IX 
(Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 
1990) mentions the issue of continence only in passing. 
In his commentary on Conf. 8.11.25-27 he speaks about 
Augustine's desire for continence exclusively in terms 
of the conflict between two wills, and does not relate 
the drama of Bk. 8 to the departure of the concubine in 
Bk. 6 in any particular way. On the other hand, J. J. 
O'Donnell's commentary takes up the issue as an 
important question in itself. See his Augustine: 
Confessions, 3 Vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,  
1992), I: xxxviii-xli; III: 7-10, 44.

5    Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and 
Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: 
Columbia University Press, 1988), 393.
6    Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, A Biography 
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 89.

7    Collectanea Augustiniana (New York: Peter Lang, 
1990), 65-80; reference is to p. 66.

8    Prosper Alfaric, L'ƒvolution intellectualle de 
saint Augustin (Paris, 1918), I: 399.

9    P. Courcelle, Recherches sur les Confessions de 
saint Augustin (Paris, 1950; 2nd edn. Paris, 1968); P. 
Courcelle, Les Confessions de saint Augustin dans la 
tradition littŽraire (Paris, 1963). For a summary see E. 
TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian (New York: Herder and 
Herder, 1970),  25-43.

10   J. J. O'Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, Vol. 3 , 
7.

11        Augustine uses the motif of a mountain in his 
sermons all too frequently. Often he is alluding to an 
idea in the Psalms --I look unto the hills and from 
whence comes my help but from Mt. Zion. He finds a way 
to link the mountain from whence comes our help with 
knowledge, and in the sermons on the Gospel of John he 
even links the evangelists with the mountains. See the 
first couple of sermons in Tractatus in euangelium 
Iohannis (CCSL 36). 

12   De beata vita, 1.3 (CCSL 29, 66): nam quem montem 
alium uult intellegi ratio propinquantibus ad 
philosophiam ingressisue metuendum nisi superbum studium 
inanissimae gloriae . . . . See for example, De vera 
religione 4.7; Conf. 7.20.26; De civ. Dei Bk. 8.

13   De beata vita. 1.4 (CCSL 29, 66): Quae cum ita 
sint, accipe, mi Theodore --namque ad id, quod desidero, 
te unum intueor aptissimum semper admiror --accipe, 
inquam, et quod illorum trium genus hominum me tibi 
dederit et quo loco mihi esse uidear et abs te cuius 
modi auxilium certus expectum.

14   Lectis autem Plotini paucissimis libris, cuius te 
esse studiosissimum accepi, conlataque cum eis, quantum 
potui, etiam illorum auctoritate, qui diuina mysteria 
tradiderunt, sic exarsi, ut omnes illas uellem ancoras 
rumpere, nisi me nonnullorum hominum esitimatio 
commoueret.

15   Contra Academicos 2.2.5 (CCSL 29, 20-21): Quis me 
tunc honor, quae hominum pompa, quae inanis famae 
cupiditas, quod denique huius mortalis uitae fomentum 
atque retinaculum commouebat? Prorsus totus in me cursum 
redibam. Respexi tamen, confiteor, quasi de itinere in 
illam religionem, quae pueris nobis insita est et 
medullitus inplicata; uerum autem ipsa ad se nescientem 
rapiebat. Itaque titubans properans haesitans arripio 
apostolum Paulum. Neque enim uere, inquam, isti tanta 
potuissent uixissentque ita, ut eos uixisse manifestum 
est, si eorum litterae atque rationes huis tanto bono 
aduersarentur. Perlegi totum intentissime atque 
castissime.

16   Contra Academicos 2.2.6 (CCSL 29, 21).

17   Soliloquia 1.10.17 (CSEL  89, 27): Quantumlibet 
velis eam pingere atque cumulare bonis omnibus, nihil 
mihi tam fugiendum quam concubitum esse decrevi. Nihil 
esse sentio, quod magis ex arce deiciat animum virilem, 
quam blandimenta feminea corporumque ille contactus, 
sine quo uxor haberis non potest. Itaque, si ad officium 
pertinet sapientis --quod nondum comperis-- dare operam 
liberis, quisquis rei huius tantum imitandus nullo modo. 
Nam temptare hoc periculosius est quam posse felicus. 
Quamobrem satis, credo, iuste atque utiliter pro 
libertate animae meae mihi imperavi non cupere, non 
quaerere, non ducere uxorem.

18   Proverbs 1:20-33; Enneads 6.5.10.

19   Soliloquia 1.13.22.

20   Soliloquia 1.14.25 (CSEL 89, 38-39).

21   Soliloquia 1.14.26 (CSEL 89, 39): Tace, obsecro, 
tace. Quid crucias? Quid tantum fodis alteque descendis? 
Iam flere non duro, iamiam nihil promitto, nihil 
praesumo, ne me de istis rebus interroges.

22   Conf. 7.7.11 (CCSL 27, 99-100): Iam itaque me, 
aduitor meus, illis uinculis solueras, et quaerebam, 
unde malum, et not erat exitus. . . . Et cum silentio 
fortiter quaererem, magnae uoces erant ad misericordiam 
tuam, tacitae contritiones animi mei. Tu sciebas, quid 
patiebar, et nullus hominum.

23   Conf. 7.7.11 (CCSL 27, 100): . . . tu gaudium uerum 
mihi subdito tibi et tu mihi subieceras quae infra me 
creasti. Et hoc erat rectum temperamentum et media regio 
salutis meae, ut manerem ad imaginem tuam et tibi 
seruiens dominarer corpori.

24   Conf. 7.7.11 (CCSL 27, 100): Ipsa occurrebant 
undique aceruatem et conglobatim cernenti, cogitanti 
autem imagines corporum ipsae opponebantur redeunti, 
quasi diceretur: "Quo is, indgine et sordide?" Et haec 
de uulnere meo creuerant, quia humiliasti tamquam 
uulneratum superbum, et tumore meo separabar abs te et 
nimis inflata facies claudebat oculos meos.

25   The Confessions of St. Augustine, translated by 
Edward B. Pusey (New York: Collier Books, 1961), 115; 
Translation  of Conf. 8.1.1 (CCSL 27, 113): De uita tua 
aeterna certus eram, quamuis eam in aenigmate et quasi 
per speculum uideram; dubitatio tamen omnis de 
incorruptiuilit substantia, quod ab ill esset omnis 
substantia, ablata mihi erat, nec certior de te, sed 
stabilior in te esse cupiebam. De mea uero temporali 
uita nutabant omnia et mundandum erat cor a fermento 
ueteri; et placebat uia ipse saluator et ire per eius 
angustias adhuc pigebat.

26   Conf. 8.1.2 (CCSL 27, 113): erat ualde non iam 
inflammantibus cupiditatibus, ut solebant, spe honoris 
et pecuniae ad tolerandam illam seruitutem tam grauem.

27   Pusey's translation (116); Conf. 8.1.2 (CCSL  27, 
114): Sed ego imfirmior eligebam moliorem locum et 
propter hoc unum uoluebar in ceteris languidus et 
tabescens curis marcidis, quod et in aliis rebus, quas 
nolebam pati, conguere cogebar uitae coniugali, cui 
deditus obstringebar.

28   Conf. 8.1.2 (CCSL 27, 114): Et inueneram iam bonam 
margaritam, et uenditis omnibus, quae habarem, emenda 
erat, et dubitabam

29   Conf. 8.2.3 (CCSL 27, 114).

30   Conf. 8.5.10 (CCSL 27, 119). 

31   Conf. 8.5.11 (CCSL 27, 120): Sic intellegebam me 
ipso experimento id quod legeram, quomodo caro 
concupisceret aduersus spiritum et spiritus aduersum 
carnem, ego quidem in utroque. sed magis ego, in eo, 
quod in me approbabam, quam in eo, quod in me improbaba. 
Ibi enim magis iam non ego, quia ex magna parte id 
patiebar inuitus quam faciebam uolens. Sed tamen 
consuetudo aduersus me pugnacior ex me facta erat, 
quoniam uolens quo nollem perueram.
32   Conf. 8.5.10 (CCSL 27, 119): --non mihi fortior 
quam felicior uisus est, quia inuenit occasionem uacandi 
tibi. Cui rei ego suspirabam ligatus non ferro alieno, 
sed mea ferrea uoluntate. 

33   Pusey's translation (120-121); Conf. 8.5. 10 (CCSL 
27, 119-120): Velle meum tenebat inimicus et inde mihi 
catenam fecerat et constrinxerat me. Quippe ex uoluntate 
peruersa facta est libido, et dum seruitur libidini, 
facta est consuetudo, et dum consuetudini non resistur, 
facta est necessitas. Quibus quasi ansulis sibimet 
innexis --unde catenam appelaui-- tenebat me obstrictum 
dura seruitus. Voluntas autem noua, quae mihi esse 
coeperat, ut te gratis colerem fruique et uellem, deus, 
sola certa iucunditas, nondum erat idonea ad superandam 
priorem uestustate roboratam. Ita duae uoluntates meae, 
una uetus, alia noua, illa carnalis, illa spiritalis, 
confligebant inter se atque discordando dissipabant 
animam meam.

34   Rex Warner's translation (175); Conf. 8.8.19 (CCSL 
27, 125):  "Quid patimur? Quid est hoc? Quid audisti? 
Surgunt indocti et caelum rapiunt, et nos cum doctrinis 
nostris sine corde ecce ubi uolutamur in carne et 
sanguine! An quia praeccesserunt, pudet sequi et non 
pudet nec saltem sequi? 

35   See Conf. 9.2.3 (CCSL 27, 134): Verum tamen quia 
propter nomen tuum, quod sanctificasti per terras, etiam 
laudatores utique haberet uotum et propositum nostrum, 
iactantiae simile uidebatur non opperiri tam proximum 
feriarum tempus, sed de publica professione atque ante 
oculos omnium sita ante discedere, ut conuersa in factum 
meum praeuenire uoluerim, multa dicerent, quod quasi 
appetissem mangus uideri. Et quo mihi erat istuc, ut 
putaretur et disputaretur de animo meo et blasphemaretur 
bonum nostrum?

36   Conf. 6.3.3. (CCSL 27, 75).

37   Cicero's Academica contains various representations 
of this school of thought.

38   Augustine's first attempt at resolving this problem 
in his Contra Academicos concedes virtually all the 
salient points to the Academics.

39   J. J. O'Donnell, Augustine: Confessions,  Vol. 2, 
343.

40   Conf. 6.3.3 (CCSL 27, 75): Quid autem ille spei 
gereret, et aduersus ipsius excellentiae temptamenta 
quid luctaminis haberet quidue solaminis in aduersis, et 
occultum os eius, quod erat in corde eius, quam sapidi 
gaudia de pane tuo ruminaret, nect conicere noueram nec 
expertus eram.

41   Possidius, Vita Augustini 27, 1-2 (PL 32.56).

42   Ambrose's De Isaac uel anima (PL  14. 527-559) is 
one such work which presents continence as the ideal for 
Christians.

43   See J. J. O'Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, Vol. 
1, xxxviii fn. 58.

44   Ibid., xxxix.

45   Ibid.

46   J. J. O'Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, Vol. 1, 
xxxvii-xxxix; Vol. 3, 7-9.

47   Conf. 6.12.21 (CCSL 27, 87): Prohibebat me sane 
Alypius ab uxore ducenda cantans nullo modo nos posse 
securo otio simul in amore sapientiae uiuere, sicut iam 
diu desideraremus, si id fecissem.

48   Conf. 6.12.22 (CCSL 27, 88): Cum enim me ille 
miraretur, quem non parui penderet, ita haerere uisco 
illius uoluptatis, ut me affirmarem, quotienscumque inde 
inter nos quaereremus, caelibem uitem nullo modo posse, 
cum illum mirantem uiderem . . . .

49   So O'Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, Vol. 2, 377: 
He comments, "Note the passives through here. 
'instabatur . . . promittebatur . . .  instabatur . . . 
petebatur . . .  expetabatur': control is slipping out 
of A.'s hands." He also calls attention to the hankering 
for a sign.

50   Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: 
Fortress, 1984), 667, assumes that Augustine's 
preoccupation with dreams in his early letters show his 
commitment to Neoplatonism. But dreams had always 
featured in Christian experience both because people 
wanted to understand their dreams and also because of 
the biblical tradition's concern with dreams and 
visionary experience. See J. LeGoff, Medieval 
Imagination, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1988), 193-231.

51   Conf. 8.6.13 (CCSL 27, 121): Et de uinculo quidem 
desiderii, quo artissimo tenebar, et saecularium 
negotiorum seruitate quemadmodum me exermeris, narrabo 
et confitebor nomini tuo, domine, adiutor meus et 
redemptor meus.

52   Conf. 8.11.26 (CCSL 27, 129): Retinebant nugae 
nugarum et uanitates uanitatium, antiquae amicae meae, 
et succutiebant uestem meam carnem et submurmurabant: 
"Dimittisne nos?" et "A momento isto non erimus tecum 
ultra in aeternum" et "A momento isto non tibi licebit 
hoc et illud utlra in aeternum".

53   Rex Warner's translation (181); Conf. 8.11.27 (CCSL 
27, 130): Aperiebatur enim ab ea parte, qua intenderam 
faciem et quo transire trepidabam, casta dignitas 
continentiae, serena et non dissolute hilaris, noeste 
blandiens, ut uenirem neque dubitarem, et extendens ad 
me suscipiendum et amplectendum pias manus plenas 
gregibus bonorum exemplorum. 

54   Ibid., 174; Conf. 8.7.18-8.8.19 (CCSL 27, 124-125): 
Ita rodebar intus et confundebar pudore horribili 
vehementer, cum Ponticianus talia loqueretur. Terminato 
autem sermone et causa, qua uenerat, abiit ille, et ego 
as me. . . . Tum in illa grandi rixa interioris domus 
meae, quam fortiter excitaueram cum anima mea in 
cubiculo nostro, corde meo . . . .

55   O'Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, Vol. 2 , 385, 
warns against romanticizing this episode in Augustine's 
life. 

56   O'Meara, The Young Augustine (London: Longmans, 
Green and Co., 1954), 129, has tried to defend Augustine 
but he seems to overlook the very pathos of Conf 
6.15.25. Augustine's anxiety needs more than the apology 
that he should have expected it. This is too open to the 
charge that O'Meara is simply defending what in any 
event appears troubling, especially because he is fully 
cognizant of Augustine worldliness at this point in his 
life (126ff.).

57   Conf. 6.15.25 (CCSL 27, 90): et annulsa a latere 
meo tamquam impedimento coniugali cum qua cubare solitus 
eram, cor, ubi adhaerebat, concisum et uulneratum mihi 
erat et trahebat sanguibem.

58   Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 88; Confessions, 
translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin (Harmondsworth and New 
York: Penguin, 1961), 131.

59   Ambrose's peculiar asceticism is a phenomenon in 
itself. This great champion of chastity (celibacy) as 
the pinnacle of Christian devotion could at other times 
show his aristocractic sensibilities by warning upper 
class Christians against marrying below their social 
rank. See Peter Brown's interesting portrait of Milanese 
snobbery and Ambrose's ascetic impulses inAugustine of 
Hippo, 79-90, and in Body and Society, 341-365, 
respectively.  

60   Rex Warner's translation (133); Conf. 6.15.25 (CCSL 
27, 90): At ego infelix nec feminae imitator, dilationis 
impatiens, tamquam post biennium accepturus eram quam 
petebam, quia non amotor coniugalii sed libidinis seruus 
enim, procuraui aliam, non utique coniugem, quo tamquam 
sustentaretur et perduceretur uel integer uel auctior 
morbus animae meae satellitio perdurantis meum, quod 
prioris praecisione factum erat, sed post feruorem 
doloremque acerrimum putrescebat et quasi frigidius, sed 
desperatius dolebat.

61   The translation is Peter Brown's [Augustine of 
Hippo,  89-90]; the passage is De Bono Coniugali 5.5. 
(CSEL 41, 193-194): Solet etiam quaeri, cum masculus et 
femina, nec ille maritus nec illar uxor alterius, 
subimet not filiorum procreandorum, sed propter 
incontinentiam solius concubitus causa copulantur ea 
fide media, ut nec ille cum altera nec illa cum altero 
id faciat, utrum nuptiae sint uocandae. et potest quidem 
fortasse non absurde hoc appellari conubium, si usque ad 
mortem alicuius eorum id inter eos placuerit et prolis 
generationem, quamuis non ea causa coniuncti sint, non 
tamen uitauerint, ut uel nolint sibi nasci filios uel 
etiam opere aliquo malo agant, ne nascantur. ceterum si 
uel utrumque uel unum horum desit, non inuenio, 
quemadmodum has nuptias appellare possimus. etenim si 
aliquam sibi uir ad tempus adhibuerit, donec aliam 
dignam uel honoribus uel facultatibus suis inueniat, 
quam conparem ducat, ipso animo adulter est, nec cum 
illa, quam cupit inuenire, sed cum ista, cum qua sic 
cubat, ut cum ea non habeat maritale consortium. unde et 
ipsa hoc sciens ac uolens inpudice utique miscetur ei, 
cum quo non habet foedus uxorium. uerumtem si ei tori 
fidem seruet et, cum ille uxorem duxerit, nubere ipsa 
non cogitet atque a tali porsus opere continere se 
praeparet, adulteram quidem fortasis facile appellare 
non audeam; non peccare tamen quis dixerit, cum eam 
uiro, quius uxor non est, misceri sciat? iam uero si ex 
illo concubitu, quantum ad ipsam attinet, nonnisi filios 
uelit et, quidquid ultra causam procreandi patitur, 
inuita patiatur, multis quidem ista matronis anteponenda 
est, quae tametsi non sunt adulterae, uiros tamen suos 
plerumque etiam continere cupientes ad reddendum carnale 
debitum cogunt non desiderio prolis, sed ardore 
concupisentiae ipso suo uore intemperanter utentes, in 
quarum tamen nuptiis bonum est hoc ipsum, quod nuptae 
sunt. ad hoc enim nuptae sunt,  ut illa concupiscentia 
redacta ad legitimum uinculum non deformis et dissoluta 
fluitaret, habens de se ipsa inrefrenabilem carnis 
infirmitatem, de nuptiis autem indissolubilem fidei 
societatem, de se ipsa progressum inmoderate coeundi, de 
nuptiis modum caste procreandi. etsi enim turpe est 
libidinose uti uel marito, honestum est tamen nolle 
misceri nisi marito et non parere nisi de marito.

62   Conf. 6.15.25 (CCSL 27, 90).

63   Conf. 8.12.30 (CCSL 27, 132).

64   See T. J.  van Bavel, "Augustine's Views on Women," 
Augustiniana 39, 1989, 5-53; note especially 33-53.

65   See E. Ann. Matter, "Conversion(s) in the 
Confessions," in Collectanea Augustiniana  (New York: 
Peter Lang, 1990), 22.

66   F. Van Flateren, "St. Augustine's Theory of 
Conversion," in Collectanea Augustiniana  (New York: 
Peter Lang, 1990), 65-80.

67   Conf. 4.4.8 (CCSL 27, 43-44): Cum enim laboraret 
ille febribus, iacut diu sine sensu in sudore laetali 
et, cum desperataretur, baptizatus est nesciens me non 
curante et preasumente id retinere potius animam eius 
quod a me acceperat, non quod in nescientis corpore 
fiebat. Longe autem aliter erat. Nam recreatus est et 
saluus factus, statimque, ut primo cum eo loqui potui --
potui autem mox, ut ille potuit, quando non discedebam 
et nimis pendebaus ex inuicem-- temptaui apud illum 
inridere, tamquam et illo inrisuro mecum baptismum, quem 
acceperat mente atque sensu absentissimus. Sed tamen iam 
se accepisse didicerat.

68   Conf. 4.4.8 (CCSL 27, 44): At ille ita me exhorruit 
ut inimicum admonuitque mirabili et repentina libertate, 
ut, si amicus esse uellem, talia sibi dicere desinerem.
69   Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 89, speculates 
that "In all probability she had been a good Catholic 
throughout her life with Augustine; and, by this vow, 
she intended either to become eligible for baptism, or 
to be re-admitted to the Eucharist."

70   Conf. 9.8.17 (CCSL 27, 143): Multa praetereo, quia 
multim festino. Accipe confessiones meas et gratiarum 
actiones, deus meus, de rebus innumerabilibus etiam in 
silentio. Sed non praeteribo quidquid mihi anima 
parturiuit et carne, ut in hanc temporalem, et corde,ut 
in aeternam lucem nascerer.

71   Again Augustine's De moribus ecclesiae Catholicae 
is an early vindication of this tradition of thought.

72   PossidiusVita Augustini 31,1 (PL 32.63-64), writes 
about how Augustine dismissed everyone during his last 
hours and returned into himself, as it were, to meditate 
on the penitential Psalms as he waited for his final 
passage to meet his God.