Garry Wills' "sizzling" (The New York Review of Books) renditions of Saint Augustine's prose in his Penguin Lives biography of the great thinker foreshadowed his translation of Saint Augustine's Childhood, the first book in Augustine's Confessiones. Now, in Saint Augustine's Memory, Wills brings his superb gifts of language and intellect to this important chapter. Acting as the hinge volume of Augustine's confessional opus, Saint Augustine's Memory makes the turn between the writer's life before and after baptism and stands as a meditation on the Confessiones' central concept. Here in private, Augustine seeks to fathom himself-to emerge later as a visionary for others on a large public stage. To him the "vast treasure store of memory" is where identity is forged, the context of present and future in which we continually relive original experience and refashion everything we remember. It is a place where we remake ourselves, interact with others, and glimpse God. Masterfully rendered and beautifully designed, Saint Augustine's Memory is sure to fascinate academics, Christians, and the general reader.
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Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, in English Augustine of Hippo, also known as St. Augustine, St. Austin, was bishop of Hippo Regius (present-day Annaba, Algeria). He was a Latin philosopher and theologian from the Africa Province of the Roman Empire and is generally considered as one of the greatest Christian thinkers of all times. His writings were very influential in the development of Western Christianity. According to his contemporary Jerome, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith." In his early years he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism and afterward by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. After his conversion to Christianity and his baptism in 387, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and different perspectives. He believed that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, and he framed the concepts of original sin and just war. When the Western Roman Empire was starting to disintegrate, Augustine developed the concept of the Catholic Church as a spiritual City of God (in a book of the same name), distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. Augustine's City of God was closely identified with the Church, the community that worshiped the Trinity. In the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint and pre-eminent Doctor of the Church. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of the Protestant Reformation due to his teaching on salvation and divine grace. In the Eastern Orthodox Church he is also considered a saint. He carries the additional title of Blessed. Among the Orthodox, he is called "Blessed Augustine" or "St. Augustine the Blessed". Santo Agostinho
