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Updated: June 7, 2025
Always ready to go away, Augustin scarcely hesitated. It is more than likely that he did not consult Monnica. He only told Romanianus, who, as he had all kinds of reasons for wanting to keep Augustin at Thagaste, at first strongly objected. But the young man pointed to his future, his ambition to win fame. Was he going to bury all that in a little town?
The master's scourge filled him with an unspeakable terror. When he was smarting all over from cuts and came to complain to his parents, they laughed at him or made fun of him yes, even the pious Monnica. Then the poor lad, not knowing whom to turn to, remembered hearing his mother and the servants talk of a Being, very powerful and very good, who defends the orphan and the oppressed.
And there were the fast-days which occurred two or three times a week, and especially the long fast of Lent a grievous nuisance when the husband wanted to give a dinner-party just on those particular days! On the vigil of festivals, Monnica would spend a good part of the night in the Basilica. There were many of these chapels even too many in the opinion of austere Christians.
He is frightened at the idea of having seen death so near, at a moment when he was so far from God so far, in fact, that it never occurred to him to ask for baptism, as he had done, in like case, when he was little. What a desperate blow would that have been for Monnica!
And even supposing that the life of this child of Thagaste, the son of Monnica, were not intermingled so deeply with ours, though he were for us only a foreigner born in a far-off land, nevertheless he would still remain one of the most fascinating and luminous souls who have shone amid our darkness and warmed our sadness one of the most human and most divine creatures who have trod our highways.
For a long while Monnica had foreseen the exceptional place that Augustin was to take in the Church. Why fritter away his talent and intelligence in selling vain words, when there were heresies to combat, the Truth to make shine forth, when the Donatists were capturing the African basilicas from the Catholics?
It may be wondered Augustin himself wonders that she did not think of finding him a wife. They marry early in Africa. Even now any Arab labourer buys a wife for his son, hardly turned sixteen, so that the fires of a too warm youth may be quenched in marriage. But Monnica, who was not yet a saint, acted in this matter like a foreseeing and practical woman of the prosperous class.
When shall I cease to be silent?... May he love to-morrow, he has not loved yet. And he who has already loved, may he love again to-morrow. Imagine the effect of such exhortations on a youth of fifteen! Truly, this springtide of love, which the poet cries for in his distress, the son of Monnica knew well was come for him.
He promised him pupils, and, above all, the support of his influence, which was considerable, Monnica, as we may conjecture, added her entreaties to those of the great head of the Thagaste municipality. Augustin yielded. Did it grieve him very much to make up his mind to this exile? It must have been extremely hard for a young man of twenty to give up Carthage and its pleasures.
Let us believe also, that in spite of his dissolute life, and the new passion that filled his heart, he did not come back to Thagaste without an affectionate thought at the back of his head for his mother. The reception that Monnica had in reserve for him was going to surprise him considerably. Since her widowhood, the wife of Patricius had singularly advanced in the way of Christian perfection.
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