1. What did you learn from Augustine’s life? What are his major works and what do they deal with? Augustine was born at Tagaste on 13 November 354. His family was not wealthy but they were able to send Augustine to school to obtain a Christian education. His mother was Christian, but his father Patricius remained a pagan. Because Augustine was such a good student, his father decided to send him to Carthage to study forensics; however, his father needed several months to get the money together for Carthage. At sixteen, Augustine remained at Tagaste with nothing to do. According to Eugene Portalie in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Augustine “gave himself up to pleasure with all the vehemence of an ardent nature” (“St. Augustine”). When he arrived in Carthage in 370, Augustine gave in to “the many seductions of the great city that was still half pagan” (St. Augustine”). Augustine’s two major works are The Confessions and The City of God. The Confessions was composed around 400 AD and tell the story of Augustine’s life and conversion to the Christian faith. The City of God was begun in 413 but later chapters were composed in 426. In this text, Augustine responds to the pagans who blamed the fall of Rome in 410 to the abolition of pagan worship (Portalie, “Works of St. Augustine”). In The City of God, Augustine creates a philosophy of history that reviews the “destinies of the world grouped around the Christian religion” (Portalie, “Works”). The philosophy of “just war” is also presented and remains the Christian West view of morality in war. One of his early texts