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He betook himself immediately to the environs of Tagasta and found an asylum for study, contemplation, and prayer. It happened that, prompted by zeal and affection, he went on one occasion in 391 to Hippo, which was on the Mediterranean Sea five leagues from Carthage, and the site of the present Bona, for the purpose of inducing a certain friend to join him in his solitude.

And in the arena of philosophical disputation he knew no superior. When his studies were completed, he returned in 370 to Tagasta and lodged with his wealthy patron and benefactor; for his father had died the year after his arrival in Carthage.

Ten of those whom he trained in this his first monastery, became bishops of the various sees of Africa, including Alypius, who was sent to Tagasta, Possidius, his first biographer, and Fortunatus, who was his successor in the See of Hippo.

St. Augustine was born on November 13, A.D. 354, at the little town of Tagasta, in ancient Numidia, which is now Algeria. His father was an unassuming and honorable soul, though of humble and modest origin. His mother was the sainted Monica, who is so justly venerated on Christian altars.

At great sacrifice on his father's part, and with the princely generosity of a noted inhabitant of Tagasta, named Romanian, he was sent to the better equipped schools of the neighboring Madaura and later to Carthage. The schools of Carthage, though not so renowned and exceptional as those of Alexandria and Antioch, were yet among the most prominent of the Roman World.

As if by divine inspiration he had laid down in a work on "Free Will," which he had begun at Rome, enlarged at Tagasta, and completed in 395, principles which afford sufficient answer to the errors of Pelagianism. This heresy broached novel teachings on man, the fall, and the state in which that fall had left the human race. St.