Born in Thagaste
Born in the small North African town of Thagaste to a pagan father and a Christian mother, Monica. He grew up speaking Latin, never learned much Greek, and spent his youth chasing ambition and pleasure in roughly equal measure.
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Augustine was born in North Africa to a Christian mother and a pagan father. He studied rhetoric in Carthage, fell in with the Manichaeans, moved to Milan, and there heard Ambrose preach. At thirty-two, sitting in a garden, he heard a child's voice say 'Take and read.' He opened Paul's letters at random and his life turned. He became Bishop of Hippo and spent the next thirty-five years writing. The Confessions invented autobiography. The City of God reimagined history. His thought on grace, free will, and original sin shaped Western Christianity for a millennium.
