Augustine was born in AD 354 in the Numidian town of Thagaste (mod. Souk Ahras, Algeria).  His parents were Patricius, a pagan, about whom Augustine’s writings say little (and modern literary histories often omit entirely), and Monica, a Christian, who raised him according to her religion.  He studied at Thagaste; Madaura, the homeland of Apuleius; and Carthage.  He became a professor of rhetoric first at Thagaste and Carthage, then at Rome and Milan in Italy.  Reading Cicero’s Hortensius was a signal event in Augustine’s youth that precipitated a serious personal crisis due to his conclusion that the Bible’s style was hopelessly inferior to the great Roman’s.  At age twenty he became an adherent of Manichaeism, only to return to orthodoxy after nine years thanks to the preaching of Ambrose and his approach to Neo-Platonism.

Augustine was baptized in 387, when health problems forced him to retire to Cassiciacum (perhaps Cassago, in Brianza) with his friends, his mother, and his son.  Later that year he returned to Africa, during which voyage Monica died.  He was ordained in 391 and became Bishop of Hippo in 396.  He died in 430, after witnessing Rome’s tragic sack and while the Vandals were still besieging Hippo.

Augustine is a pillar of western thought.  He was an astonishingly prolific writer, and many spurious works are also attributed to him.  Of certain authorship are at least two hundred works (though this depends on one’s definition of ‘work’—since many comprise numerous treatises, that number could easily be multiplied).  Excluding his letters and treatises, there are 232 books distributed into 94 works that Augustine himself composed and ordered chronologically.

They are traditionally divided as follows:

1) Dialogues from Cassiciacum (e.g.: Contra Academicos, Soliloquia, De Immortalitate animi).

2) African texts prior to his assumption of the episcopacy (e.g. De musica, De Genesi contra Manichaeos, De magistro).

3) Episcopal works (e.g. Confessiones and the De civitate Dei).

It is also possible to divide them according to theme (thus Marin 1987):

1) Philosophical writings (e.g. De grammatica, De musica)

2) Apologetic writings (e.g. De civitate Dei, De vera religione, De utilitate credendi)

3) Doctrinal writings (e.g. De trinitate, De fide et symbolo, De diversis quaestionibus).

4) Ascetic and moral writings (e.g. De opere monachorum, De sancta virginitate, De mendacio).

5) Polemical writings (e.g. Contra epistulam Manichaei quam vocant fundamentum, Contra Faustum, Psalmus contra partem Donati),

6) Exegetical writings (e.g. De Genesi ad litteram, Enarrationes in Psalmos, De doctrina Christiana).

7) Sermons (over 500) and epistles (about 300). [M. Manca; tr. C. L. Caterine].