The Example of a Woman Sexual Renunciation and Augustine's Conversion to Christianity in 386

The Example of a Woman

Sexual Renunciation and Augustine's Conversion

to Christianity in 386

Endnotes are marked by

numerals in brackets

and appear at the bottom of

the file. File as a whole is

about 100K.

For you converted me to you so that I neither sought a

wife nor any other worldly hope. I was now standing in

the rule of faith in the same way that you had revealed

me to her so many years before. And you transformed her

mourning into a joy more abundant than she had wished

and much dearer and more chaste than that of having

grandchildren of my flesh.

These are the words that conclude Bk. 8 of the

Confessions, where Augustine recounts the dramatic final

moments of his conversion to Christianity. In these

words he speaks about God converting him "in such a

way" that the varied desires and confusing interests

that gathered around him in Milan were shed like old

garments never to be taken up again. Augustine also

describes his mother's new joy, and relates for the

first time that in Monnica's attempts for her son's

marriage we must see not only her desire for his

conversion but even the domestic joys of seeing

Augustine's offspring.

This untoward domestic hope also reveals a

remarkable imperfection. Why does Monnica cherish such a

desire when there is already a grandson in the person of

Adeodatus? Is it simply a wish for more grandchildren?

Or, is it, as may well have been the case, a desire for

grandchildren whose status in Roman society would not be

so questionable? Monnica and Patricius had always been

conscious of their precarious place in the social world

of Tagaste, and this keen sense of their place in that

society had contributed to the kind of aspirations they

had entertained for Augustine's career.

The concern here for grandchildren falls into that

general order of earthly desires which comes in for

criticism in the early part of the Confessions. The

conclusion of Bk. 8 recalls this other side of "pious"

Monnica. In the moment of resolution for her son,

Monnica too undergoes a conversion: her mourning is

turned into a joy that is purer and more chaste, a joy

that is not tied to earthly cares and hopes. The word

used here to describe Monnica's transformation is

couertisti, the same word Augustine's uses to describe

his own experience.

For himself, Augustine believes he has received a

double portion. Not only is he converted to God, but he

is converted from the desire for a wife and the honor of

a respectable career. This tandem, of love for the world

and a woman's embrace, emerge as the twin anxieties that

overshadow Augustine's last year in Milan before his

conversion. Augustine's words are the invocations of a

renunciate: turning his back on the world --his hopes,

desires and dreams. To have given up the hope of

marriage meant that Augustine was turning his back on

the Milanese girl on whom he was in waiting. But why

this drastic change? And why so final an act of sexual

renunciation? What brought Augustine from the position

of seeking a wife in order to prepare himself for

Christian baptism (hence conversion to Christianity) to

the point where conversion entailed an act of sexual

renunciation?

Studies of Augustine's conversion have been

unusually silent on this point. Even when references

have been made to a passage such as De bono coniugali

5.5, where Augustine describes a scenario that fits all

too perfectly the circumstances under which his first

concubine was separated from him, it has not led to

reconsiderations of the events shortly preceding

Augustine's conversion. Even less has it engendered a

reevaluation of the role of the mother of Adeodatus in

Augustine's conversion. Peter Brown, for example, sees

the