#14 – Augustine of Hippo

* Let’s talk more about Augustine of Hippo, aka St Augustine. * He’s one of the most important figures in all of Christianity. * Through his sheer intellectual power, and enormous output of work , he has come to be seen as the cornerstone of the western Christian tradition. * it has been said that anyone who claims to have read all of Augustine’s works must be lying * And a lot of the stuff he came up with helped lead the world into the dark ages. * He was born in 354 in North Africa, a place known then as the Roman province of Numidia, today it’s mostly Algeria. * His mother Monica was a Christian, a Berber, an indigenous ethnic group from Numidia. * His father was a Pagan who converted to Christianity on his deathbed, and a Roman citizen, probably a freed slave himself or descended from a freed slave. * All of this means that Augustine, one of the most influential Christians, was quite possibly a black African. * Why does this matter? * Because the Christians ended up enslaving millions of Africans because they believed they were subhuman. * And Augustine himself justified slavery by saying slavery was God’s punishment for sin. * Anyway, Augustine got a reasonably good education for the time and turned out to be a really bright kid. * When he was 17, he had a sugar daddy who paid to send him to Carthage where he continued his studies in rhetoric. * He studies the masters – Plato, Socrates, Cicero, Demosthenes. * And he’s a quick learner. * It was there that he first read Cicero’s “On Philosophy”, which taught that genuine human happiness is to be found by using and embracing philosophy, and it changed his life and gave him an interest in philosophy. * It also gave him an interest in fucking. * He hung out with other guys who liked to brag about their sexual exploits and it seems Augustine did the same. * It was during this period that he supposedly uttered his famous prayer, “grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” * Because he was incontinent. * Always shitting himself in public. * And – he liked it. * “Lord, please stop me from shitting myself in public – but not today, Lord, I’m going out to a club later, you know Lord, one of those clubs where the kinky shit is okay, and I need to shit myself. The name of the club is two girls one cup, Lord. So please just hold off on that a little bit.” * LORDY CAT * It’s also about this time that he meets a young woman who he falls in lust with. * And this is where it gets REALLY fucked up. * He’s with this woman for 15 years – we don’t know her name – and they have a kid together. * The kid’s name is Adeodatus (‘Given by God’), may have been a reflection of the fact that the baby’s arrival was evidently unplanned. * Or – it was a virgin birth. * Can’t be completely sure. * These things happen. * But they couldn’t get married because his mother wanted him to marry someone of his own class. * Someone who would provide a dowry so he could make his mark on the world. * His CHRISTIAN mother didn’t want him to marry the woman he obviously loved. * And wants his child to be a bastard. * But during this 15 years, he teaches grammar and rhetoric in his hometown and then in Carthage. * Also during this time he left the Christian church to follow the Manichean religion. * We talked about them briefly before. * Followers of the prophet Mani. * It was a gnostic religion. * Mani declared himself to be an “apostle of Jesus Christ”, and his teaching was intended to succeed and surpass the teachings of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism. * Remember we talked about how they were heavily persecuted by Diocletian for being a foreign religion.