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WorkAugustine of Hippo

The Confessions of St. Augustine

The book that made autobiography a Western form: not a memoir but a prayer, in which Augustine tells God the story God already knows.

by Augustine of Hippo671 passages held

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Original title
Confessiones
First published
(aged 43)
Original language
Latin

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Overview

Written not as a memoir for readers but as a prayer addressed to a God who already knew all of it, the book gave the West what is usually counted its first autobiography of an inner life. Augustine wrote it as bishop of Hippo, around forty-five, roughly 397 to 401, and he tells his story to arrive at a question about himself: why he did the things he did. The famous scene is small on purpose. As a boy he stole pears he did not want and threw them to pigs, and the triviality is the point — he wanted the wrong for its own sake, and the book will not stop worrying at what that means. He traces nine years spent among the Manichees, whose account of evil he had believed and then outgrown; his mother Monica, praying and following him from Africa to Italy; and the afternoon in a Milan garden when he heard a child chanting tolle lege, take up and read, opened Paul, and turned. Then the narrative stops. The last books leave his life entirely and turn to memory, to time, and to a close reading of the opening of Genesis — as if a self could only be understood by asking what it means for anything to be made at all. The form he improvised here had no real precedent and set the pattern for confessional writing ever after.

Key concepts

Why is the Confessions addressed to God rather than to readers?

It is written as a prayer, not a memoir, spoken throughout to a God who already knows the whole story. The form is the argument: Augustine confesses not to inform God but to understand himself before him, in humility rather than self-display. The reader overhears a soul examining itself in God's presence, which is what made the book the first Western autobiography of an inner life.

What is the meaning of the stolen pears?

As a boy Augustine and companions stole pears they did not want and threw them to pigs, and he returns to the episode for pages. Its very triviality is the point: he took no pleasure in the fruit, only in the wrongdoing itself, and this is what troubles him. The scene lets him probe the puzzle of evil willed for its own sake, sin with no motive but the transgression.

What does 'tolle lege' refer to?

Tolle lege, take up and read, is the phrase Augustine heard a child chanting in a Milan garden at the crisis of his long inner struggle. He opened Paul's letters at random, read a verse on putting off the flesh, and found his resistance suddenly gone. It is the hinge of the conversion narrative, and he presents the moment as the work of grace rather than of his own resolve.

What is Augustine's puzzle about time?

In Book 11 he asks what time is and finds he cannot say. The past no longer exists, the future does not yet, and the present has no duration, so none of the three seems to have being, yet we measure time constantly. His solution places time in the mind: we measure the impressions events leave in the soul, a present attention stretched across memory and expectation.

Who was Monica in the Confessions?

Augustine's mother, a devout Christian who prayed for his conversion for years and followed him from Africa to Italy. She is a central presence in the narrative, and her death, and Augustine's grief and shared vision with her at Ostia, form one of its most affecting passages. She embodies the persistent, hoping love the book sets against his years of wandering among the Manichees.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The will at war with itself

Why does a person will a thing and fail to do it, commanding their own self and meeting refusal? Augustine makes his own divided will the central puzzle of a life.

Our heart is restless, Augustine tells God at the opening, until it rests in you, and the narrative traces that restlessness through desires that could not settle him. The stolen pears are small on purpose: a boy takes fruit he does not want and throws it to pigs, wanting the wrong for its own sake, and Augustine will not stop worrying at what that means. Long habit hardens into a chain no resolve can break, so he wills chastity and cannot yet will it wholly, until the Milan garden and the child's voice, take up and read. The turn he credits to grace, not his own strength.

  • desire
  • will
  • habit
  • grace
  • suffering
  • conversion
  • sin

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What is time, that we live inside it

What is time, that Augustine knows until he is asked and then does not? The late books leave his life to ask how a creature made in time can measure it at all.

After the conversion the narrative stops and turns inward, to memory and to time. The past no longer exists and the future does not yet; only the present has being, and it has no duration. So where is the time we measure? Augustine locates it in the soul: we measure not events but the impressions they leave, a present of things past, present and to come, held in the attention. Memory he explores as a vast interior country in which he meets even himself. He ends on the opening of Genesis, as if a self could be grasped only by asking what it means for anything to be made.

  • time
  • memory
  • eternity
  • creation
  • consciousness
  • ontology
  • existence

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Telling God the story God knows

Why confess a life to a God who already knows all of it? Not to inform him, but to understand oneself in his light, a self that stays partly hidden from itself.

Not a memoir but a prayer, the work is addressed throughout to God, who needs none of the telling. The point of confessing is the confessor's own: to arrive, through humility rather than self-display, at a question about himself, why he did the things he did. Augustine finds that he is a puzzle he cannot fully read; there is more in a person than the person knows, and only in God's light does the self become partly legible. Confession here means both the admission of sin and the acknowledgement of God, one act. The form he improvised, a life examined before God, had no real precedent.

  • truth
  • humility
  • identity
  • faith
  • interpretation
  • knowledge
  • transcendence

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Within this work

passages held
671
distinct concepts
768
by passages held, corpus-wide
#36

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: creation with metaphysics.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 17 pairings. 116 shared passages in all. 83 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
creationmetaphysics11
metaphysicsontology9
metaphysicstruth9
perceptiontime9
creationontology8
metaphysicstime8
ontologytruth8
perceptiontruth8
creationtime7
languagetruth7
changecreation6
changetime6
ontologytime5
changeontology4
languageontology4
languagetime4
changemetaphysics3

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 387 The Soliloquies (Soliloquia)

    The most inward of Augustine's early philosophical dialogues, written at the Cassiciacum retreat before he took orders — the one that invented the form, and the word, for talking with oneself.

     LAEN
  2. 397 The Confessions of St. Augustine (Confessiones) you are here LAEN
  3. 413 The City of God (De civitate Dei contra paganos)

    The largest of Augustine's works, written across his late maturity as a bishop, turns a defence against one accusation — that Christianity doomed Rome — into a theology of history that shaped Western political thought for a thousand years.

     LAEN
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