Summary: Confessions

Augustine describes his childhood, and the petty theft he may have committed during that time. He concludes that there is no such thing as childhood innocence ¹.

His adolescence was also marked by delinquent acts, such as this theft of pears, particularly serious since it was not a question of feasting on them, but of throwing them to the pigs: our only pleasure was to have committed a forbidden act ².

Augustine's youth was marked by debauchery: amorous adventures and fleeting encounters occupied most of his nights.

He wanted to become a lawyer or a rhetorician, but after reading Cicero (Hortensius), he turned to God. Nevertheless, only one point made me curb my ardour: the name of Christ was not in that book ³. He reads the Holy Scriptures, but finds Cicero's work incomparably better: This book seems to me unworthy of comparison with Ciceronian majesty ⁴.

He meets Manichaeans (adherents of a doctrine describing the Earth as the site of a battle between Good and Evil), and is at first seduced by this doctrine which he then violently rejects, as a diabolical trap, a glue made from a combination of the syllables of the [...] names of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit ⁵. In fact, these worship not God himself, but his works (the moon, the sun...).

Augustine is nevertheless challenged by certain questions posed by the Manichaeans, such as where does evil come from?. Or:Is God limited by a bodily form? ⁶.

He teaches rhetoric and is vaguely interested in astrology. He loses a dear friend, and leaves for Carthage. He writes a treatise On the Beautiful and the Proper which he misplaces. The future Bishop of Hippo also immersed himself in reading Aristotle's Categories.

His encounter with Faustus, a Manichaean bishop, great trap of the devil ⁷, plunges him into great confusion. This one defends the idea that it is not man who sins, but a nature foreign to us, and that God is a body, opposing another body which would be evil:

When I wanted to think about God, I could only conceive of a material mass - to my mind, there was nothing that was not matter. This is what also made me believe in a material substance of evil, a formless, horrible mass, either thick [like earth] or tenuous and subtle like an aerial body [...] I opposed the two masses to each other, both infinite ⁸.

The idea of mind, or imaterial being, was therefore not yet grasped and possessed by Augustine: I only knew how to represent the mind to myself as a subtle body ⁹.

This materialistic conception of the world suffocates him:

But above all, what held me prisoner and as if suffocated, I who conceived only material realities, was these famous masses; panting under their weight, I was out of breath of the limpid and pure breath of Your truth ¹⁰.

Positioning evil as a body limits God's perfection, since God is no longer infinite, but collides with this contrary element.

At Milan, Bishop Ambrose appealed to him, but he was more attentive to his style of eloquence than to his message. He left the Manichaeans, and became sceptical but also Catholic, waiting for a message or a sign. This transitional phase I had not yet reached the truth, but I had already torn myself away from error ¹¹, brought him closer to his mother Monique, a fervent Catholic.

At 30, he has a natural son with his lover and prepares an arranged marriage that is to take place two years later.

¹ Confessions, Book I, chapter 19
² II, 4
³ III, 4
⁴ III, 5
⁵ III, 6
⁶ III, 7
⁷ V, 3
⁸ V, 10
⁹ ibid.
¹⁰ V, 11
¹¹ VI, 1