Assignment: Analytical questions
1. What was the most important factor or event leading to Augustine's conversion?
Discuss several examples;compare and contrast;refer to specific passages in the text.
2.How, specifically,does Augustine see God working in ways he cannot understand?Discuss several examples, referring to specific passages in the text.
3.Describe Augustine's concept of love.What types are clearly envisioned?What's basic or most important?
What does he not mention?
Factual reading questions Introduction
1.What were Augustine's dates? 1177
2.What dualistic religion did Augustine follow in his young adulthood at Carthage?1177
3.What was Augustine's profession while in Rome and Milan? 1177
4.What philosophy and quasi-religious form of mysticism did Augustine embrace in Milan? 1177
5.How old was Augustinewhen he converted to Christianity? 1178
6.When did Augustine begin writing the Confessions? 1178
7.T/F:The autobiographical genre in which Augustine's Confessions belongs was almost without precedent at the time.1178
8.According to our editors, Augustine's intense self-examination influenced"medieval Christians who sought... to purge their souls of sin" as well as early modern writers such as which two? 1179
Book I
9.Whom does Augustine address in his Confessions? 1179
10.Whydid his mother or nurses give "so willingly that milk"by which he was suckled? 1179-8011.
T/F: He learned to speak by systematic instruction of elders.1180
12.When he first began to use words, what did he "express"? 1180
13.What did he ask from God when he first learned to pray as a boy? 1181
14.How are men and boys alike? 1181
15.T/F: Augustine disliked learning and hated to be forced to it.1181
16.T/F: Augustine sees children as basically selfish and hence sinful.1182
17.Which would Augustine more willingly forget, the great stories or basic spelling? 1182-83
Book II
18.T/F: As he entered adolescence, Augustine began serious study and his approach to God.118419.
As he became sexually active, what were his parents worried about? 118420.
Why did Augustine and his friends enjoy stealing the pears? 118421.
T/F: Augustine says that evil acts are not done except to gain (or avoid losing)some lower good. 118522.
T/F: Augustine saw no beauty in the pears. 118523.
What is more caressing than the "caresses by which the lustful seduce"? 1186
Book III
24.Where did he go to continue his education and teaching? 118625.
After falling in love, Augustine "wore [his]chains in bliss but with torment too."By what was he tormented? 118726.What was a mirror "to [his]own miseries"? 1187
27.According to Augustine, what is lacking when someone " leaves the theatre unsatisfied"? 1187
28.Of what subject does Augustine state, "the less honest I was, the more famous I should be"? 11872
29.Augustine says he was first inspired to pursue "immortal wisdom,"that is, a concept of truthand the intellectual life,by reading Hortensius.What Roman orator wrote Hortensius?1188
30.When he was 18, how long had Augustine's father been dead? 1188
31.Why was he "repelled"when he "first read those Scriptures"(the Bible)?1188
Book V
32.What was the main reason Augustine moved to Rome to teach? 1189
33.Whom did the undisciplined students hurt? 1189
34.What unethical thing did Augustine have to do to get away from his mother? 1189
35.What did his mother not realize that God "would bring her from"Augustine's leaving? 1190
Book VI
36.Later in Rome Augustine told his mother he was no longer a Manichean. How long had he been one? 1190
37.What did Manicheans renounce? 1190
38.What was Augustine'smother's name? 1190
39.T/F: His mother, a Christian, had lamented Augustine's Manichean beliefs.1190
40.Besides marriage, what else did Augustine'smother want for him? 1190-91
41.How old was the girl whom Augustine agreed to marry? 1191
42.Augustine and some others agreed to form a commune.Why did their plans fall apart? 1191
43.T/F:The poorest member of their group was the strongest advocate of the commune.1191
44.Why was Augustine's mistress, the mother of his son,sent back to Africa? 1191
45.What was Augustine's"soul's disease"? 1192
46.T/F: Augustine healed his grief over losing his long time mistress by taking another. 1192
Book VIII
47.To what is Augustine referring, "And now I began to hear them not half so loud"? 1192
48.In the new direction he was facing, "of"what did Augustine envision "the austere beauty"? 1192
49.Who was Alypius? 1193
50.Augustine heard a childlike voice.What did it say? 1193
51.How had Anthony been converted? 1194
52.To what Biblical passage did Augustine turn? 1194
53.To whom did this apply: "Now him that is weak in faith, take unto you"? 1194
54.Whom did they immediately tell of their conversion? 1194
Book IX
55.Where did Augustine's mother die? 1194
56.Augustine says "greediness goes with"what?1195
57.Of what habit was Augustine's mother cured by an insult? 1195
58.According to Monica's example, what must a woman not
do "by deed or even by word"? 1196
59.Who was Patricius? 1196
60.By what practice should "we study to extinguish wrath"? 1197
61.T/F: Monica was never able to convert her husband. 1197
62.By what are"all things made"? 1198
63.What had God granted to Monica "in superabundance"? 1199
64.T/F: As she lay dying, Monica asked to be buried in her home country. 1199
65.How old was Monica when she died? 1199
66.Who was Adeodatus? 1199
67.For what did Augustine feel "very much ashamed"? 1200
68.Who was Ambrose? 1201.
T/F: As good as his mother was, Augustine prays for her sins. 1202
70.What does Augustine hope will gain prayers for his mother by many others? 1202.