With Book VI we are moving ever closer to Augustine’s conversion scene at the end of Book VIII, and we are halfway through all thirteen books of Confessions. In Book VI, Augustine considers his interactions with many significant people during his three to four years in Milan (from late 384 AD when he arrived as a professor of rhetoric until his baptism in April 387 AD). Among these are the charismatic Bishop Ambrose of Milan, the drunken beggar, his close friend Alypius, and his common-law wife, whom his family dismisses in favour of a younger woman they considered more suitable for marriage.
The book begins with a description of Augustine’s ever faithful mother, Monica, who accompanies her son to his new teaching post in Milan. There, both Monica and Augustine attend the Masses celebrated by Ambrose (who would be recognised as a saint shortly after his death in 397 AD). Augustine notes how the bishop had gained the respect of his parishioners and even powerful members of the community.
Restoring
When he was not attending to them, he would be restoring his body with necessary food or his mind with reading. In particular, Augustine observes a habit we take for granted today: when the bishop read, he did so silently and to himself, which was not considered normal at the time! Augustine speculates that perhaps he did so to conserve his voice, which was “very prone to hoarseness.” In the end, however, Augustine is as baffled as everyone else by this new practice of silent reading and is left still pondering an explanation for it: “But whatever his reason, that man undoubtedly had a good one.”
Among the many ways bishop Ambrose helps Augustine, he inspires Augustine with his commitment to truth and shows Augustine how to find the truth in Scripture: “I listened to him straightforwardly expounding the word of truth to the people every Sunday.” Most importantly, he helps Augustine move beyond the literal meaning of the text, which can be misleading, to the spiritual reality lying beneath: “I began to see that you [God] would not have endowed them [Sacred Scriptures] with such authority among all nations unless you had willed human beings to believe in you and seek you through them.”
Nearer than all else, most hidden yet intimately present, you are not framed of greater and lesser limbs; you are everywhere, whole and entire in every place, but confined to none”
Ambrose also brings Augustine to a higher understanding of the spiritual nature of God, who is not a material form like a human body, but a “spiritual substance” that is “nearer than all else, most hidden yet intimately present, you are not framed of greater and lesser limbs; you are everywhere, whole and entire in every place, but confined to none.” And Ambrose guides Augustine to a better understanding of the Catholic Church: “I had not yet come to accept her [the Church’s] teachings as true, but at least I now knew that she did not teach the doctrines to which I had gravely objected.”
Encounters
Among his various encounters in the northern Italian city, he recounts his experience one day observing a drunken beggar: “As I passed through a certain district in Milan I noticed a poor beggar, drunk, as I believe, and making merry.” Augustine contrasts the beggar’s apparent happiness with his own real misery due to his intense desire for fame and wealth: “Goaded by greed, I was dragging my load of unhappiness along.” He even wonders if perhaps the beggar’s choice of occupation was worth considering for himself.
We often remember Augustine’s many words on lust, assuming the word refers mostly to sexual desire, but we must keep in mind that his greed and ambition – in short, all excessive and disordered desires – are included in his definition of the word. Of course, he says, he would not have preferred to follow the beggar’s example; he wanted, as he says, to be himself, even if this entailed his current misery.
He did not yet understand that his education could bring him joy and become a way of connecting with other human beings through teaching. During this time, however, he only saw his education as a way of rising socially, becoming wealthy, and gaining fame and glory. He concludes: “What kind of glory was that, Lord? No glory that was to be found in you; for just as his [the beggar’s] was no true joy, so mine was no true glory, and it turned my head more fatally.”
If Augustine’s spiritual obstacle was lust in the form of sexual desire and worldly fame and wealth, Alypius was obsessed with shows”
Given his many social interactions and perplexed awe at the bishop’s silent reading and study, I’ve always assumed that Augustine was quite extroverted. Indeed, following his observation of the drunken beggar, he seeks out his friends to talk about it: “I spoke fully to my friends on these lines” and “Those of us who lived as friends together sighed deeply over these experiences.” Among them is another young man like himself with whom he forges a strong friendship: Alypius.
Individuality seems like a modern concept, but one of the reasons Confessions is important is not just for learning about Augustine’s unique journey, but also that of his friends and acquaintances who are all struggling to find in their own way “the right way to live.”
If Augustine’s spiritual obstacle was lust in the form of sexual desire and worldly fame and wealth, Alypius was obsessed with shows, which at this time could include even violent and bloody gladiatorial combat: “the whirlpool of Carthaginian immoral amusements sucked him in; it was aboil with frivolous shows, and he was ensnared in the madness of the circuses.”
University
Augustine is worried about his friend and seeks to guide him to better pastimes, which include his university courses and reading. One day, with the help of a text, Augustine is able to make an important point about shows, which helps his friend, thus leading Augustine to conclude that God “brought about his correction through my agency.” He expands on this idea to show that God works through every one of us and how each of us is, indeed, our “brother’s keeper” (Genesis 4:9).
So deeply was she engrafted into my heart that it was left torn and wounded and trailing blood”
Also integral to Augustine’s spiritual journey is his common-law wife, whom he only mentions in Books IV and VI of Confessions. Nevertheless, like his mother Monica, she too has accompanied him to Milan with their son Adeodatus. And it is there that Monica decides to send her away in order to prepare her son for a more “proper” marriage. Augustine describes the intense grief he felt following her dismissal: “So deeply was she engrafted into my heart that it was left torn and wounded and trailing blood.”
According to Augustine, she then returned to Africa and made a vow to God that she would thereafter live a celibate life. Unfortunately, Augustine at this time is not ready to follow her example – “for I was […] a slave of lust” – but eventually he would. And thus she proves to be a kind of “brother’s keeper” to Augustine and provides us a glimpse of his future self.
Sarah Faggioli received her PhD in Italian literature from the University of Chicago in 2014. For the last eight years she has taught in the Augustine and Culture Seminar Program at Villanova University (alma mater of Leo XIV) just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken with kind permission from Augustine, The Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding, New City Press, 2019, and the mobile app, edited by Allan Fitzgerald and Noël Falco Dolan.
