There, his sinful ways persisted, but his discovery of Cicero’s Hortensius made him hungry for wisdom. Augustine also presents a famous episode involving pear theft, from which he articulates a theory of sin.īook III tells of Augustine’s arrival as a young man in the major African city of Carthage to continue his studies. His pagan father, Patricius, emerges as a character opposing Augustine’s salvation and his Christian mother, Monica, as one supporting it. He then provides an overview of his infancy and boyhood, confessing the sins he inherited through his own nature and those he acquired as a result of misguided conditioning from home and school.īook II chronicles the continued waywardness of Augustine’s adolescence and the emergence of the lustful habits that will become his greatest obstacle to conversion. Book I begins with an extensive prayer in which Augustine contemplates God’s inconceivable mystery. This study guide refers to the 2002 New City Press paperback edition titled The Confessions and translated by Maria Boulding.Īugustine divided Confessions into 13 books, which would more appropriately be called chapters today. Today, it ranks among the most important of all Christian texts, and the same can be said of its prominence in Roman literature. Although not much read upon its release, Confessions, buoyed by Augustine’s elegant writing, candid self-examination, and religious passion, began to grow in popularity in the 12th century.
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