Writings of St Augustine
St Augustine wrote books, letters and sermons, and the size of his literary output is astonishing. A contemporary Augustinian scholar estimates it as being equivalent to "approximately that of writing a 300-page printed book every year for almost 40 years."
What St Augustine wrote
Augustine wrote books, letters and sermons, and the size of his literary output is astonishing. A contemporary Augustinian scholar estimates it as being equivalent to "approximately that of writing a 300-page printed book every year for almost 40 years."
This amount of writing would have been impossible without the assistance of scribes who attended him and were trained to transcribe words at the rate that they were spoken.
Augustine's achievement is even more startling when one realizes that his major works, as opposed to his letters, were written at different sessions over a period of years. In other words, his longer works often had been written in stages, and sometimes these stages were years apart.
Over five million words that Augustine wrote or preached are still available today, but not all of them have been translated into English.
A new-look App on St Augustine’s Confessions
Highly recommended: A new-look App on St Augustine’s Confessions.
Augustine's three conversions
The scholarly Pope Benedict XVI proposed that St Augustine in his Confessions wrote about "three conversions" during his life. The Pope suggested that the lengthy and complex journey of conversion of Augustine as model of continuous conversion for all Christians.
St Augustine and Teaching
In the voluminous writings of St Augustine of Hippo, there were a number of books about aspects of religious education, rhetoric, etc. Here is a series of quotations; the citations refer to the Latin version of the text.
St Augustine and students
Augustine was a skilled teacher. Despite never having taught in a modern school his experience in the classroom and his reflections on teaching are extensive and give some pointers to the climate we could come to expect in an Augustinian class room and school. We have no ready picture of Augustine's teaching style or manner before his conversion in Milan in August 386.
An Augustine Quiz
This quiz was developed by Fr Francis Aherne O.S.A. at the Augustinian house of postulants at Southlands in Nairobi, Kenya, and was used in One World Week With Augustine in May 2008. Since that date, Fr Aherne has moved back to Ireland after a life of ministry in Africa.
Christmas and New Year's greetings