This classic biography was first published forty-five years ago and has since established itself as the standard account of Saint Augustine's life and teaching.
The remarkable discovery of a considerable number of letters and sermons by Augustine cast fresh light on the first and last decades of his experience as a bishop. These circumstantial texts have led Peter Brown to reconsider some of his judgments on Augustine, both as the author of the Confessions and as the elderly bishop preaching and writing in the last years of Roman rule in north Africa. Brown's reflections on the significance of these exciting new documents are contained in two chapters of a substantial Epilogue to his biography (the text of which is unaltered). He also reviews the changes in scholarship about Augustine since the 1960s. A personal as well as a scholarly fascination infuse the book-length epilogue and notes that Brown has added to his acclaimed portrait of the bishop of Hippo.
Peter Brown is Rollins Professor of History emeritus at Princeton University. Brown is the leading English-language authority on St. Augustine; his many books include Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity, Body and Society, Power and Persuasion, Authority and the Sacred, and The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, a.d. 200-1000.
"I salute Brown's achievement in bringing Augustine out of the tomb of theological doctrine, and setting his mind and emotions working before our eyes."—Richard Southern, New Statesman
"Justly applauded for its intelligence, and for the skill with which it relates the life and thought of a man dead for more than 1,500 years to the life we live now."—Frank Kermode, The Observer
"He has attained to the true stature of his subject."—Owen Chadwick, Catholic Herald
"It is an intellectual biography, a portrait in depth of the man, and a brilliant study of the period."—J. M. Cameron, New York Review of Books
"A model biography. Mr. Brown is an impeccable scholar but also a vivid biographer and a delightful writer; he brings Augustine and his whole age persuasively to life."—Hugh Trevor-Roper, Sunday Times
568 pp.5.375 x 8.5
9780520280410$29.95|Paper
Nov 2013