Essay About Augustines Conversion And Example Of A Woman Sexual Renunciation

The Example of a Woman Sexual Renunciation and Augustines Conversion to Christianity in 386
Essay Preview: The Example of a Woman Sexual Renunciation and Augustines Conversion to Christianity in 386
Report this essay
The Example of a Woman
Sexual Renunciation and Augustines 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 mothers new joy, and relates for the
first time that in Monnicas attempts for her sons
marriage we must see not only her desire for his
conversion but even the domestic joys of seeing
Augustines 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 Augustines 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 Monnicas transformation is
couertisti, the same word Augustines 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 womans embrace, emerge as the twin anxieties that
overshadow Augustines last year in Milan before his
conversion. Augustines 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 Augustines 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
Augustines conversion. Even less has it engendered a
reevaluation of the role of the mother of Adeodatus in
Augustines conversion. Peter Brown, for example, sees