This biography of Saint Augustine is ideal for someone not part of the Christian elect but yet interested in the development of Western (Catholic) Christianity. The focus is primarily on the personal and professional experiences in Augustine's life that helped shape the development of ideas on original sin, predestination, and grace espoused by one of the "doctors" of the early church.

Part of what makes Peter Brown such a great historian is that he is physically unable to write a book that doesn't go out of its way to wipe the dust of history from its characters, revealing living, breathing humans whose decisions are motivated by the bric-a-brac that composes the individual human experience (personality, emotions, family and friend dynamics, cultural peculiarities, social status, etc).

Brown did some of this must-needed housekeeping on the historical Augustine, and we’re all the better for it. One of the sections that most illuminates the man behind the hagiography, concerns Augustine’s battle of ideas with the proponents of Pelagianism (Pelagius and later Julian of Eclanum). Students of early Christianity will know that Augustine expended a great deal of effort to convince his colleagues, the Pope and the Western Roman Emperor that Pelagianism represented a sharp reversal of established Christian doctrine, and as such constituted a dangerous heresy. Augustine’s writings and behavior during this internecine war of Christian ideas has earned the early church father a reputation as an intolerant and dogged pursuer of fellow citizens of the City of God.

Without getting knee-deep in theology, the masterstroke of Brown’s Augustine of Hippo is showing the persecutor of Pelagius not as a high-minded, detached theologian serving as the attack dog of Christian dogma, but as a Bishop very much in touch with the bread-and-butter issues of his constituents. To the reader, Saint Augustine becomes a man so humbled by his knowledge of human frailty, learned from his own life experiences, that he is unwilling to accept Pelagianism's conception of a God Who would set unattainable standards of sinlessness upon His flock; in essence making Christianity not a faith with a big enough tent for all people, but an exclusive club for those whose own efforts are enough to achieve salvation without God’s favor. Without hesitation, Augustine the man is willing to go to bat for humble people seeking salvation but aware of their own limitations and unable to understand or without the practical time to digest the musings of a disconnected theological elite.

One of the best biographies I have ever read. Not only is Augustine probably one of the most interesting persons in History (having been marked as the last man of antiquity and the first man of modernity; having witnessed the fall of the Roman Empire), but Peter Brown writes fascinating accounts interwoven with primary sources that depict Augustine as a man in his time and element.

Lengthy biography of Augustine originally written in 1966 but now updated with a lengthy epilogue summarizing the last last 30 years of scholarship on the subject. It was a very interesting and informative book and I learned much about the Roman Africa of the 300s and 400s that I had known before. However, it was ultimately not the book I was seeking. I was more interested in reading about the theology of Augustine and why he is still influential today. I'll keep looking for that book.

Brown is truly a master of his field and on intimate terms with Augustine. I’m grateful to have sat at the master Augustine’s feet beside him. I even heard the echo of a still greater Master in Brown’s copious quotations from Augustine. Come and see.

Extremely well done! I learned a lot, not only about Augustine the bishop, and the Augustine the young tormented scholar, but about the Roman Empire circa 400 AD, and the Rise of Christianity. It will be interesting to reread this biography in class with Dr. Graham.

This is a wonderful book--engaging, insightful, and judicious from start to finish. The material Brown added in 1999 to account for new material and new interpretive directions in the study of Augustine is very good as well, refreshingly un-defensive about how he erred when first writing and appreciative of the expanded portrait of the man now available.

This excellent biography of the late neo-Platonist-turned-Christian was assigned reading for Dave Hassel's Philosophy of St. Augustine course during the first semester of 1981/82 at Loyola University Chicago. Having read all of the early and much of the later work of this western patristic figure, I found Brown's book extremely rewarding in providing a better sense of Augustine's background and political life as a church bureaucrat. Readers only familiar with his 'Confessions' will, however, not be lost as Brown presumes little knowledge of his readers.

For some greater account, informed by Brown to some extent, of my opinion of Augustine, see my review of the book entitled 'Augustine the Reader'.

Magisterial. An excellent biography of the life of Augustine.

This is an incredibly detailed biography of Augustine. Peter Brown uses Augustine’s writings and other sources of the period to create a biography which must be considered the authoritative work on Augustine. It is a difficult read at times and I read this over a period of time, taking it slowly. However, it was certainly worthy the effort.

Read for seminary. A fully immersive look at Augustine’s life. A little too academically verbose for my tastes, but then, it is a biography of Augustine.

The past is a foreign country. When we read history, we shouldn't seek to necessarily read moral tales and place ourselves at the helm. Instead, we must seek to have humility and strive to understand the characters in their place and time.

I had to constantly remind myself of this when reading Peter Brown's magisterial biography of Augustine of Hippo, or known affectionately by most as St. Augustine. Brown's prose and integration of source material in this biography is remarkable. At times, even beautiful. Yet, all that being said, this was an incredibly difficult book to read. Augustine is one of the most brilliant - if not *the* most brilliant - minds in the history of the Christian church, compiling a massive amount of intellectual material over the course of his life. The reader of Augustine needs to proceed with caution. Thus, doing justice to Augustine's legacy in under 500 pages is an accomplishment in and of itself. But within these 500 or so pages is not loose musings or thoughts but sentences loaded with thoughtfulness. Peter Brown writes with heavy prose. Readers beware.

All in all, this is an incredible book, but in attempting to traverse the mountain of Augustine's thought, by way of Peter Brown's leading, don't be surprised if you get altitude sickness - I know I did. The views are stunning but only if you can handle the headaches.

There’s a reason this is the Gold Standard for Augustine biographies. Beautifully written, Brown weaves the life-story of St. Augustine in way that causes you to feel yourself close very to the Bishop of Hippo himself. A must read for all interested in this man-his life and his work.