1. Youth.

Augustine himself has supplied a wealth of information with a relative chronology (esp. in his Confessiones, Retractationes, and Epistulae); the biography of his younger friend Possidius is also important. Augustine was born in the city of Thagaste in Roman North Africa (Souk Ahras, Algeria). His mother, Monica, was a Catholic Christian, and his father, Patricius, belonged to one of the cur…