St Augustine’s Confessions: Mother Monica, Concubine, Marriage, and Philosophy, Books 6 & 7

Why should we reflect the young St Augustine’s budding career in Rome, Milan and
Carthage as he describes in Books 6 and 7 of his spiritual autobiography, the
Confessions?
How did his study of philosophy, and listening to the sermons of St Ambrose,
convince the young Augustine of the truth of the Christian faith, causing him to
reject the heretical doctrines of the Manichean heresy?
How did the teachings of St Ambrose answer the questions young Augustine had
about the truth of the Christian Scriptures?
Why did the young Augustine permit his mother Monica to arrange a politically
motivated marriage, compelling him to send away his concubine of fifteen years,
mother of their son Adeodatus, meaning gift from God?

Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video. Feel free to follow along in the
PowerPoint script we uploaded to SlideShare.

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The Confessions were written soon after St Augustine was drafted to be
the co-bishop of Hippo, near Carthage. The Confessions are not only a
confession of faith and a confession of sin and sinful longings, but also a
mirror into his soul, exploring his innermost motivations. The style is
unique, Bishop Augustine addresses his Confessions as a prayer to God,
addressing God directly, imbedding verses of Scripture and the Psalms
directly into his Confessions as he writes these words on his soul.
In the first two chapters of his Confessions, St Augustine reflects on:

In Books 1 & 2 of the Confessions, St Augustine reflects on:
• His birth, youth and his spiritual development under his
Christian mother Monica and his pagan father Patricius.
• Speculations on how children learn, and how children
and mankind are affected by Original Sin.
• How the incident where young Augustine and his gang
of youngsters stole many pears from a neighbor’s
orchard was a reflection of this Original Sin of Adam and
Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.
https://youtu.be/gdK1a3AbI9w

In Chapters 3, 4, and 5 we reflect on the budding
career of young Augustine, as he decides to take the
ship to Italy to advance:

https://youtu.be/ydskqlgZSrE
In Books 3, 4 & 5 of the Confessions, St Augustine
reflects on:
• His career in teaching and rhetoric first in the city of
Rome, then Milan,
• His growing appreciation of NeoPlatonic philosophy,
• And his growing doubts about the heretical
doctrines of the Manichean sect that he had joined.

We reviewed the differences between Christianity,
where the Almighty God is the source of all
goodness, where evil is but a corruption of the good,
and the dualistic Manichean system, where good and
evil are more or less equal, and eternally battle for
supremacy.

St Ambrose and St Agustine, by Pedro Berruguete, 1500

When we left St Augustine in Milan at the end of Book 5, he had
decided to leave the heresy of the Manichees and, impressed by
the teachings of the sermons of St Ambrose, he decided to
become a Catholic catechumen, pondering philosophy as he
decided whether he would be baptized. This is also somewhat of
a turning point, as St Ambrose was one of the last of the Church
Fathers in the Western Roman Empire who wrote their
theological treatises in Greek, while St Augustine, along with
Tertullian, was one of the first Latin Church Fathers who had a
limited command of the Greek language.

Young Augustine Welcomes Monica to Italy
Conversion of St Augustine, by Fra Angelico, 1435

At the end of Book 5, we also left St Monica, mother of St
Augustine, on the docks of North Africa as her son sailed away to
Italy, leaving her behind, as her mothering had been a bit too
smothering, and he wanted to make his way in the world without
her tagging so closely behind.
But at the beginning of Book 6 of the Confessions, we learn that
St Monica, indeed, followed her son, who by this time gained an
influential teaching position in Milan. When Diocletian had split
the Roman Empire into East and West, the Western imperial
court was moved to Milan.

St Augustine and Monica, Time Magazine

St Augustine was happy that his mother joined him,
perhaps he was successful in training her so her
mothering would not be so smothering, or in
theological terms, that her love was no longer
impure, but that she now loved him with a purer love
through God. He had sailed to Italy with his
concubine and their son Adeodatus, joining their
small religious community was his mother Monica
and a good friend and former student, Alypius.

Conversion
of St
Augustine,
by Fra
Angelico,
1435

Bishop Augustine remembers fondly
her love for her wayward son, “in
Christ she believed that before she
left this life, she would see me a
faithful Catholic.” St Augustine
fondly remembers his mother’s
arrival on the sailing ship she caught
from North Africa: “Now my mother
had come to me, for her piety had
given her strength to follow me over
land and sea, facing all perils in the
sure faith she had in you, O God.”
St Monica and St Augustine, by Giuseppe Riva, 1910

St Monica even has a
saint’s story: “When the
ship was in danger, it was
she who put heart into
the crew, the very men to
whom passengers” “turn
for reassurance when
they are alarmed. She
promised them that they
would make the land in
safety,” because God had
reassured her in a vision.
Jonah and the Whale, by Gaspard Dughet, after 1745
“She found that I, too, was in grave danger because of my despair of discovering the
truth. I told her that I was not a Christian, but at least I was no longer a Manichee.”

Young Augustine appears to have been intimidated
by Bishop Ambrose, his Confessions do not retell
any private spiritual conversations he had with
Ambrose.

St Augustine remembers, “All could approach
Ambrose freely and it was not unusual for
visitors to be announced, so that often, when we
came to see him, we found him reading like this
in silence, for he never read aloud.” This attests
to the fact that ancient works were, indeed, hard
to read, capitalization and punctuation was one
of the Carolingian reforms under Charlemagne.
St Augustine continues, “We would sit there
quietly, for no one had the heart to disturb him
when he was so engrossed in study. After a time,
we went away again, guessing that in the short
time when he was free from the turmoil of other
men's affairs and was able to refresh his own
mind, he would not wish to be distracted.”
St Ambrose, Museo del Duomo, Milan, 1600's

But Monica was not in the least intimidated, she
visited Ambrose often, whether he looked forward to
her visits is a detail lost in the sands of history.
Perhaps her clinging embarrassed young Augustine,
could her inevitable comments about her
catechumen son embarrass him enough so he was
reluctant to draw Bishop Ambrose into deep
philosophical discussion?

St Ambrose
barring
Theodosius from
Milan Cathedral,
by Anthony van
Dyck, 1619
St Ambrose
Stopping
Theodosius, by
Camillo
Procaccini, late
1500's

We know that St Augustine maintained extensive
correspondence with other Church Fathers, in particular
with St Jerome, who translated the Latin Vulgate Bible, but
was there any correspondence with St Ambrose? Perhaps
this is explained by the fact that St Ambrose passed away
during the first decade that St Augustine served as bishop.
We did review an interesting scholarly article on Augustine
and Ambrose that did not seem to mention and
correspondence between them.

The Four Fathers of
the Latin Church, by
Workshop of Jacob
Jordaens, 1600's,
Saints Gregory,
Jerome, Augustine
and Ambrose

Young Augustine Asks: What Is Happiness?
Begging musicians, by Jan van der Venne, 1651
While vainly chasing world ambitions at the
emperor’s court St Augustine came across a happy
beggar, whose joy was fed by wishing those who
passed by a wonderful day. “There is a world of
difference between the joy of hope that comes from
faith and the shallow happiness that I was looking
for.” This is when St Augustine realized that “my
learning was not source of happiness to me. I only
made use of it to try to please others, and I only
tried to please them, not to teach them.”

St Augustine reasons to himself: “My soul,
then, must be aware why a man is happy.
There is a world of difference between the
joy of hope that comes from faith and the
shallow happiness that I was looking for.
There was a difference between the
beggar and myself. He was certainly the
happier man, not only because he was
flushed with cheerfulness while I was
eaten away with anxiety, but also because
he had earned his wine by signing good
day to passers-by while I was trying to
feed my pride by telling lies.”
Begging children in Vienna, by Johann
Matthias Ranftl, 1852

St Ambrose on Interpreting Holy Scriptures
Young Augustine was deeply
influenced by St Ambrose’s
method of interpreting the
Holy Scriptures. St Augustine
remembers, “Ambrose often
repeated the text: ‘The written
law inflicts death, whereas the
spiritual law brings life,’ as
though this were a rule upon
which he wished to insist most
carefully.”
St Augustine and St Jerome, by Giovanni Ambrogio Bevilacqua

St Augustine continues, “I began to prefer the
Christian teaching. The church demanded that
certain things be believed even though they
could not be proved, for if they could be
proved, not all men could understand the
proof, and some could not be proved at all. I
thought that the church was entirely honest in
this and far less pretentious than the
Manichees, who laughed at people who took
things on faith, made rash promises of
scientific knowledge, and then put forward a
whole system of preposterous inventions
which they expect of their followers to believe
on trust because they could not be proved.”
Consecration of St Augustine, by Juame Huguet, 1463

St Augustine would adopt the principle of
spiritual allegory in Scripture that he heard
explained in the sermons of St Ambrose: “As
for the passages and scriptures which had
previously struck me as absurd, now that I had
heard reasonable explanations for many of
them, I regarded them as” “profound
mysteries.” I came to believe “that the
authority of the Scriptures should be respected
and accepted with the purest faith, because
while all can read it with ease, it also has a
deeper meaning in which it’s great secrets are
locked away. It’s plain language and simple
style makes it accessible to everyone, and yet it
absorbs the attention of the learned.”
St Ambrose and St Augustine, by Michael
Wolgemut and workshop, 1498

St Augustine would elaborate his principles of Biblical
Interpretation in his work On Christian Doctrine, aka
On Christian Teaching, which was highly influential to
later Catholicism.

https://youtu.be/uQCnAJMPoos
St Augustine teaches, “Whoever thinks he understands the
Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but interprets them in a
way that does not build up this two-fold Love of God and
love of neighbor, does not truly understand the Scriptures. If,
on the other hand, a man draws a meaning from Scriptures
that builds up the two-fold Love of God and love of his
neighbor, although he does not precisely understand the
exact meaning of the author, his error is not pernicious, and
he is wholly clear from the charge of deception.”

Gladiators and Movies: Addictive Violence
Gladiators in Coliseum, by Leon Gerome Pollice Verso, 1872 / The Gladiator, by Nicolao Landucci, 1850

Although the Roman Empire was now a Christian
empire, it still retained some barbaric pagan
practices, including the spectacle of gladiators
fighting to the death in the Coliseum.

St Augustine describes a friend who became
addicted to the spectacle, many in the crowd, “when
they arrived at the arena, saw that the place was
seething with the lust for cruelty.” St Augustine
continues, “When he saw the blood” drawn by the
swords of the gladiators, “it was as though he drank
a deep drought of savage passion. Instead of turning
away, he fixed his eyes upon the scene and drank in
all its frenzy, unaware of what he was doing. He
reveled in the wickedness of the fighting and was
drunk with the fascination of bloodshed. He was no
longer the man who had come to the arena, but was
simply one of the crowd, a fit companion for the
friends who had brought him.”
Roman gladiators, by Howard Pyle, 1911

Is this comparable to us watching horror movies with
gratuitous violence, or awful movies such as the Texas
Chainsaw Massacre, or the Freddie Kruger Halloween
movies? I must admit I am somewhat addicted to
watching the Keanu Reeves John Wick clips on YouTube,
what about the gung-fu battles where he slays bad guys by
the dozens? He always gets shot himself, but only once,
and miraculously heals on the run as he fights through the
pain. True, nobody is actually murdered in these staged
moves, but how can watching this stuff improve our soul?

Young Augustine Sends His Concubine Away
Professor Phillip Cary relates,
“St Augustine had a concubine, which was like a
common law marriage today, whom he loved for
fifteen years, and they had a son together. His mother
Monica talked him into sending his concubine away,
she swore she would never love another, something
which St Augustine the bishop writing his Confessions
later regretted doing, for he loved her dearly. St
Augustine uses the language of friendship when
describing his concubine, describes losing her as he
describes losing a friend, ‘my mistress was torn from
my side, and my heart which cleaved to her was
racked and wounded and bleeding.’”

Why did Monica, and here she is mother Monica, not St Monica,
as Bishop Augustine states they were both on the outskirts of
Babylon on this episode, talk her son into sending his concubine
away? She had arranged a marriage with a rich young Christian
girl from a good family whose connections would help the career
of her bright and promising son. She was too young to marry, so
Augustine would have to wait a few years, and in the meantime,
he took another concubine. After he was baptized and had a true
conversion experience, St Augustine had second thoughts, called
off the marriage, and left his lucrative post to sail back to Africa
to spend his life as a Christian philosopher.

Virgin Mary
gives a black
penitence belt
to St Augustine
and his mother
St Monica, by
Simon Benedikt
Faistenberger,
1749

As background, Roman custom strongly discouraged
marrying someone who was considered below your social
station, which meant that often concubines were actually
committed relationships. One modern example from the
Lincoln movie is Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican
during and after the Civil War. He had a committed
relationship with his Negro housekeeper, whom he could
never marry because of social mores. Since it was an
accepted Roman custom, the ancient Church often
tolerated concubines.

Peter Paul
Rubens - Briseis
Given Back to
Achilles,
painted 1630

Also, in ancient Greece it was common for men to wait
until they were in their thirties to marry teenage girls. For
this reason, the ancient wives were not treated as equal
companions.
St Augustine never mentions his concubine’s name in the
Confessions, we must surmise that the reason was, since
she was likely still living in North Africa when he wrote his
Confessions, that he wanted to preserve her privacy, not
that he wanted to forget her.

St Augustine remembers how, “in those days, I lived
with a woman, not my lawfully wedded wife, but a
mistress whom I had chosen for no special reason but
that my restless passions had alighted on her. But she
was the only one, and I was faithful to her. Living with
her, I found out by my own experience the difference
between the restraint of the marriage alliance,
contracted for the purpose of having children, and a
bargain struck for lust, in which the birth of children is
begrudged, though, if they come, we cannot help but
love them.” They named their son Adeodatus,
meaning gift from God, and though he was a bright
son, he passed away in Italy before St Augustine
returned to North Africa.
St Augustine, by Rubens, 1638

Her reaction when she was asked to leave his side
and return to Africa really pricked his conscience,
and no doubt made him feel deep regret.

Augustine remembers, “The woman
with whom I had been living was torn
from my side as an obstacle to my
marriage. This was a blow which
crushed my heart to bleeding because I
loved her dearly. She went back to
Africa, vowing never to give herself to
another man, and left me with the son
whom she had borne me. But I was too
unhappy and too weak to imitate this
example set for me by a woman.”
St Augustine, by Carlo Cignani, 1600’a

He could not wait the two years until
his chosen rich Christian wife would
be of age, so he took another
mistress. “At first the pain was sharp
and searing, but then the wound
began to fester, and though the pain
was duller there was all the less hope
of a cure.”
St Augustine, before his baptism,
prays perhaps his most famous, or
infamous, prayer to God: “Give me
chastity and continence, but not yet.”
St Augustine, British School, late 1500's

Young Augustine Ponders Philosophy
Young Augustine was not satisfied with
the Manichean explanation, so he
pondered the nature of evil. He
remembers, “I was trying to find the origin
of evil.” “Where is evil? What is its origin?
How did it steal into the world? What is
the root or seed from which it grew? Can
it be that there simply is no evil? If so, why
do we fear and guard against something
which is not there? If our fear is
unfounded, it is its itself an evil, because it
stabs and wrings our hearts for nothing.”
14th-century illustration of the execution of Mani

Veering further away from the
heresies of the Manichees, St
Augustine remembers that “when I
asked myself what wickedness was, I
saw that it was not a substance, but
perversion of the will when it turns
aside from you, O God, who are the
supreme substance, and veers
towards things of the lowest order,”
becoming inflated with evil desire.”
St Augustine Disputing with the Heretics, by Vergós Group, 1470

What confounded both the Manicheans and the
Philosophers was the concept of the Incarnation,
where Jesus Christ, as the everlasting Son of God,
existing before Creation, condescended to descend,
taking flesh, living among us and dying for our sins,
so we could, in turn, ascend and become adopted
sons of the Father, sharing in his glory.

The Holy Trinity,
by Antonio de
Pereda y
Salgado, 1600's

When reading the books of the NeoPlatonists, St
Augustine observed that, though they explained it
using a differing formulation, they agreed with some
core concepts of Christianity, including those echoing
the beginning verses of the Book of John: “At the
beginning of time the Word already was; and God
had the Word abiding with him, and the Word was
God. He existed at the beginning of time with God. It
was through him that all things came into being, and
without him came nothing that has come to be. In
him there was life, and that life was the light of men.
And the light shines in the darkness, a darkness
which was not able to master it.”

However, St Augustine did not find in
philosophy any mention of the miracle of Jesus,
Son of God, who “dispossessed himself and
took the nature of a slave, fashioned in the
likeness of men, and presenting to us himself
to us in human form; and then he lowered his
own dignity, accepted an obedience which
brought him to death, death on a cross; and
that is why God has raised him from the dead,
giving him that name which is greater than any
name, so that everything in heaven and on
earth and under the earth must bend the knee
before the name of Jesus, and every tongue
must confess Jesus Christ as the Lord, dwelling
in the glory of God the Father.” Resurrection of Jesus, by Raphael, 1502

St Augustine remembers that before his
Baptism, he “had not even an inkling of
the meaning of the mystery of the Word
made flesh. From what the Scriptures
record of him, Jesus ate and drank, slept
and walked, that he was sometimes
happy, sometimes sad, and that he
preached his gospel. All I had learned was
that when your Word took human flesh,
he must have also taken a human soul and
a human mind.”
St Augustine's Baptism, Benozzo Gozzoli, 1465

“So, granted that what the scriptures
say is true, I accepted that Christ was
a perfect man. I did not think of him
as having only the body of a man, or
a man’s body and sensitive soul
without his reasoning mind, but as a
man complete. And I thought he was
superior to other men, not because
he was Truth in person, but because
in him human nature had reached
the highest point of excellence, and
he had a more perfect share of
divine wisdom.”
Christ and the penitent sinners - Pieter Paul Rubens

St Augustine remembers, “I was full of self-
esteem, which was a punishment of my own
making. I ought to have deplored my state,
but instead my knowledge only bred self-
conceit.”
St Augustine prays to God, “For You and You
alone are the life that recalls us from the
death we die each time we stumble and fall.
You alone are the life which never dies and
the wisdom that needs no light besides itself,
but illumines all who need to be enlightened,
the wisdom that governs the world, down to
the leaves that flutter on the trees.”
St Augustine, by Antonio Rodríguez, 1691

Future Reflections: Augustine’s Confessions
14th-century illustration of the execution of Mani
St. Augustine in His Study, painted 1502 by Vittore Carpaccio

Next, we will reflect on Books 8 and 9, on St
Augustine’s continuing spiritual journey as a
catechumen, and his baptism by Bishop Ambrose.
Book 10 is about his spiritual journey, and the
remaining books are a commentary on Genesis,
which is a continuation of the Confessions, since this
corrects his heretical Manichean views on Creation
and the nature of God.

Future Reflections on Confessions:
Books 8 and 9: Baptism of St Augustine.
Book 10 reflects on his spiritual journey.
Books 11-13: Commentary on Genesis,
correcting his views on Creation and the
nature of God.

St Augustine was an excellent orator and writer, but
the Confessions is the most beautifully crafted and
closely edited of his works, and there are many
translations. Please view the first video for more
comments on my sources.

I was so impressed by the lectures of Professor Philip
Cary of the Teaching Company on Augustine:
Philosopher and Saint, that I quoted from them as if
they were another source. This is one of my favorite
sets of lectures. Back in the day, he was one of the
most popular Teaching Company lecturers. It has not
been transferred to Wondrium, perhaps for health
reasons he has never recut the lectures.

https://amzn.to/3ZvQ7g5
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/augustine-philosopher-and-saint

To find the source of any direct
quotes in this blog, please type in
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footnote.
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St Augustine’s Confessions: Mother Monica, Concubine, Marriage, and Philosophy, Books 6 & 7

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St Augustine’s Confessions: Mother Monica, Concubine, Marriage, and Philosophy, Books 6 & 7