The Confessions as Autobiography

Abstract

At several points after deciding to join the catholic church in the summer of 386, Augustine framed current arguments – especially against the Manicheans – by referring to his own past. While these references can be appreciated as Augustine’s “first confessions” (so O’Donnell 1992: 1.li–lvi), they bear only a superficial resemblance to Augustine’s astonishing masterpiece of ca. 397. A brilliant and profoundly original work of creative theology, the Confessions combines biblical interpretation, late Platonism, and anti-Manichean polemic with haunting autobiographical narrative. Augustine’s account of his past, which begins in Book 1 and shapes his narrative through to the close of Book 9, is the stylistic hallmark of the Confessions. It is what makes this work so unusual in its own period, so perduringly valuable to Augustine’s later biographers, and so seemingly accessible to his modern readers. On the strength of this narrative, the Confessions has been hailed as the first introspective autobiography in western letters. In one sense, this description is apt. Composed as a prayerful address to God, the Confessions surveys Augustine’s life during the 33-year period from his birth and early education (Books 1 and 2), through his years with the Manicheans, up until his liberating encounter with Neoplatonic thought inMilan (Books 3–7) and his resolve to enter Ambrose’s church as a sexual celibate (Book 8), ending at the point when, shortly after baptism, his mother Monica dies (Book 9). Once this narrative section concludes, however, some 40 percent of the Confessions’ eighty thousand words remain. After Book 9, Augustine’s focus shifts abruptly from his past (ca. 387, when the “autobiographical” section ends in Italy) to his present (ca. 397, when the bishop of Hippo, resuming the question with which he had opened this work in 1.1.1, ponders how fallen humanity can know God). Book 10 contemplates memory; Book 11, the nature of time; Book 12, spiritual and material creation; Book 13, revelation, the church, and final redemption. These incandescent final books retrospectively alter any simple reading of the