St Augustine of Hippo

Augustine receives one of the great long lives of the year, and the line of the story is built around grace rather than genius. He appears first as a brilliant but disordered young man, restless, proud, enslaved to lust, and for years trapped in Manicheism and in the love of public success. His mother Monica prays and weeps for him, while in Milan the preaching of St Ambrose steadily loosens the hold of old errors on his mind. This life is careful to show that intellectual change alone did not save him. Books of the Platonists could raise his thoughts, but they could not heal his will. The stories of Victorinus and of the monks stirred him more deeply, and the visit of Pontitian, with the tale of St Antony, pushed the struggle to its crisis. Then comes the garden scene retold from the Confessions: Augustine in tears, hearing the childlike voice say, Take up and read, opening the apostle, and finding there the command that broke the last resistance.

Converted, baptized by Ambrose, and turned away from the old life, he did not become merely a private penitent. He moved into priesthood and then to Hippo, where he became bishop and spent the rest of his strength in preaching, writing, governing, correcting, consoling, and praying. This life notices his personal humility, his care for the poor, his disciplined common life with clergy, and the sane, pastoral wisdom that appears even in his letters about marriage, communion, and daily conduct. It also gives due weight to the larger battles. Augustine stands at the center of the struggle against Donatism, then against Pelagianism, and later answers pagan mockery after the sack of Rome in the City of God. The same man who wrote so powerfully also confessed his sins so nakedly. That is why the life works: Augustine is immense, but his greatness remains Christian because he is first a sinner remade by mercy.