Augustine the African

By: Catherine Conybeare

Narrated by: Catherine Conybeare

An extraordinary work of revisionist history that centers Africa in the life of one of our greatest philosophers.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430), also known as Saint Augustine, was one of the most influential theologians in history. His writings, including the autobiographical Confessions and The City of God, helped shape the foundations of Christianity and Western philosophy. But for many centuries, Augustine's North African birth and Berber heritage have been simply dismissed. Catherine Conybeare, a world-renowned Augustine scholar, here puts the "African" back in Augustine's story. As she relates, his seminal books were written neither in Rome nor in Milan, but in Africa, where he had returned as a wanderer during a perilous time when the Western Roman Empire was crumbling.

Using extant letters and other shards of evidence, Conybeare retraces Augustine's travels, revealing how his groundbreaking works emerge from an exile's perspective within an African context. In its depiction of this Christian saint, Augustine the African upends conventional wisdom and traces core ideas of Christian thought to their origins on the African continent.

©2025 Catherine Conybeare (P)2025 Tantor Media

Very intimate biography indeed. Buy it!

This Author writes a biography like it’s no one’s business. Admittedly, I do not read biographies often, but I have read enough about people’s lives to know this book stands in a class on its own. She speaks of Augustine as if she knew him. She pulls the reader into the story— I did not want the book to be over. She is a great writer!

Sensitivity of the author/reader. Loved the accent on Northern Africa.

Great listen and astute analysis of Augustine. His journey through life was caught beautifully by this author.

Fresh Story Through Return to Primary Sources

It would be a mistake to call this revisionist history as the author, a Latin scholar, went back to sources and, with her own knowledge of their latin of the time and place, looks at the history from a new point of view that does not derive entirely from the Catholic Church and its habit of controlling narratives that "improve" history. In this book, the author views her subject as a man in difficult times who can only be understood properly in context, and makes an excellent case the Augustine, educated in Roman ways despite being North African, was under extreme pressure during his enforced elevation to a bishopric in conflict with the Roman Church. Along with other returns to primary sources such as the finds as Qumran and Nag Hammadi makes clear the reasons that suppression was practiced quite apart from the hostility of Iraneus, and brings the history of the late empire and its transitions into coherence. A very loving and intellectually astute presentation of a major figure in Western History who has been understood only, in some areas, as a defender of Rome. Not quite so simple.

Significance of African Origin of St.?Augustine

Enlightening narrative of significance of ancient North African milieu on Augustine. Author’s reading ver good.

It matters that Augustine was African.

It has been about 10 years since I have read a introduction to Augustine and then a few years ago I read Oden’s How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind. Augustine the African is similar to Oden’s book in that it is particularly working to show how the Augustine culture rooted in Africa impacted his thinking.

This was not a traditional biography, but there was plenty of biographical background for those who might not have much background on Augustine. Augustine was born in African as the son of a low level official. His family not well off, but they did have enough resources that Augustine was able to get an education locally before going to further education in Carthage and then eventually in Rome and Milan. (The family was not well off enough to educate his siblings.)

What I found most interesting about the book was how human Augustine was portrayed. He was very human, brilliant, but human. Like many who grew up outside of the main cultural center without much money, he had a chip on his shoulder. He also had a passion to succeed. Between those two, much of the bad decisions in Augustine’s life was connected to one of the other. He also had a good bit of disappointment and tragedy. His mother did a lot to get him where he was, but she also got rid of the mother of his son to try to him to make an adventitious marriage. That marriage didn’t happen, but his relationship with (the never named women) ended. Over a few years his mother, and then several of his close friends, and eventually his son, died. Those tragedies impacted his in many ways.

After the main introduction of his early life, the longer focus of the book was more thematic. There were good discussions about the fight between the Donatists and Pelagianism. Those fights are often framed theolgoically, but not culturally contextuallized. Conybeare contextualizes those theological discussions and shows those and other issues like the common language of Punic, his pastoral work navigating social class and politics and the wider issues with the fall of Rome and the changes in the social system around him were influenced by the local African culture.

There is a real irony to me that US Christianity has often done such a good job contextualizing both to the culture around it and in global missions, but often seem incapable of understanding that all Christianity is contextualized. This is, in some ways, a great book in understanding how the history of Christianity was influenced by local contextualization in unforeseen ways. It is important to understanding Augustine as a brilliant, but flawed thinker was influenced by culture and made decisions that were not all universally good decisions. Augustine made bad administrative decisions, he appointed pastors that had bad character and became abusive. He used his own experience with women and sex to inform his thinking, but then universalized it in ways that were not helpful for all.

But he also attempted to be pastoral and care for those under his spiritual responsibility in many good ways. I have some real disagreements with Augustine, and probably even more with those who have used Augustine to justify their positions. But I had a lot more understanding about why some of those positions were taken and a lot more grace for the real tragedy of his life than I had previously.

Augustine the African was very readable and engaging. I listened to this on audiobook read by the author after I found it on sale. Conybeare isn’t the most exciting reader, but her narration was fine. The content was great and either print or audio are good options.