Augustine of Hippo

This biography was first published thirty years ago and has established itself long since as the standard account of Saint Augustine’s life and teaching. The recent discovery of a considerable number of letters and sermons by Augustine has thrown fresh light on the first and last decades of his experience as a bishop. These circumstantial texts have led Peter Brown to reconsider some of his judgements on Augustine, both as the author of the Confessions and as the elderly bishop preaching and writing in the last years of Roman rule in North Africa. Professor Brown’s reflections on the significance of these new documents are contained in two chapters of a substantial epilogue to his biography (the text of which is unaltered). He also reviews the changes in scholarship about Augustine since the 1960s. There is a personal as well as a scholarly fascination in the book-length epilogue and notes that Professor Brown has added to his portrait of the Bishop of Hippo.