Life of Augustine
A short life of Augustine by a bishop who had lived with him and known him, he says, for almost forty years. It covers what the Confessions leave out: Augustine’s work as presbyter and bishop of Hippo, his habits, and his death during the Vandal siege.
Read the text at tertullian.org ↗The translator’s introduction (tertullian.org) ↗
Possidius was one of the men trained in Augustine’s monastery at Hippo and afterwards a bishop in Numidia. He wrote within a few years of Augustine’s death in 430; when he writes, the Vandals have overrun Africa, but he still speaks of Carthage, Hippo and Cirta as churches that survive. In the preface he says that he will not repeat what Augustine told of himself in the Confessions and will set down what he himself saw and heard.
For Augustine’s life as a bishop this is the testimony of an eyewitness and close friend: the ordination at Hippo, the debates with Manichaeans and Donatists, the household rule, the last illness and death in the third month of the siege. It is also a work of praise in the manner of a saint’s life, and it says almost nothing of Augustine’s thought. For the years before Possidius knew him, such as the baptism at Milan, he reports what he had learned from Augustine and his books.
Cited in
- AD 386, firm date
- AD 411 to AD 418, estimated date