Saint Augustine: Select Letters (Loeb Classical Library #239)

Augustine

ISBN 10: 0674992644 / ISBN 13: 9780674992641

Published by Loeb, 1930

About this Item

1930. Revised. Hardcover. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780674992641

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Saint Augustine: Select Letters (Loeb Classical Library #239)
• Publisher: Loeb
• Publication Date: 1930
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674992644
• ISBN 13: 9780674992641
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Correspondence of a Church Father.

Aurelius Augustine (AD 354–430), one of the most important figures in the development of western Christianity and philosophy, was the son of a pagan, Patricius of Tagaste, and his Christian wife, Monnica. While studying to become a rhetorician, he plunged into a turmoil of philosophical and psychological doubts, leading him to Manichaeism. In 383 he moved to Rome and then Milan to teach rhetoric. Despite exploring classical philosophical systems, especially skepticism and Neoplatonism, his studies of Paul’s letters with his friend Alypius, and the preaching of Bishop Ambrose, led in 386 to his momentous conversion from mixed beliefs to Christianity. He soon returned to Tagaste and founded a religious community, and in 395 or 396 became bishop of Hippo.

From Augustine’s large output the Loeb Classical Library offers that great autobiography the Confessions (in two volumes); On the City of God (seven volumes), which unfolds God’s action in the progress of the world’s history, and propounds the superiority of Christian beliefs over pagan in adversity; and a selection of Letters which are important for the study of ecclesiastical theologians.

About the Author

James Houston Baxter (1894–1973) was Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of St Andrews.