The Confessions - Book IV

Book IV of Augustine's Confessions takes us through his life from age 19 to age 28. Augustine taught rhetoric as depicted in in the painting to the left by the Dutch painter, Jan Van Scorel (1495-1562), "St. Augustine Teaching Rhetoric." (That may be Monica on the left grieving or praying for her son.) As a master rhetoritician, Augustine was very full of himself at this time.

Though Augustine continued to pursue sexual sin, he eventually settled down with a woman for close to ten years, and had a child through her, though he did not formally marry her.

Augustine continued during this time in Manicheaism, including a form of prediction, partly based on astrology, associated with an elaborate sacrificial ritual. The painting to the left by an unknown Flemish artist, "St. Augustine Sacrificing to a Manichean Idol," depicts this ritual. Augustine, with the help of a friend, eventually concluded that astrology was "uterly bogus," and that when the predictions did happen to come true, it was mostly by chance aided by some skill of the predictor in discerning something about the nature of the one who sought a prediction.
Augustine formed a very close friendship. He found that a close friend was like having one soul in two bodies (poetic). His friend became gravely ill. Christians baptized him while he was mostly unconscious  He began to recover, and Augustine looked forward to jesting with him about this baptism (which Manicheans despised). However, before he could share this laugh, his friend suddenly relapsed and died. Augustine was crushed, feeling like half his soul had been torn away. "At this grief my heart was utterly darkened; and whatever I beheld was death."

Augustine would recover, but from then on, his thoughts would be marked by the transitiveness of this life. He studied and wrote books, and begins to deeply ponder life - what is permanent, what is beautiful, what is fitting? Though he thinks he is brilliant, ultimately he finds nothing satisfactory and no satisfactory answers.

On to Book V.
Back to Book III.