Born and raised at the North African edge of the Roman Empire, St. Augustine led a life of relative comfort and excess that was dominated by his devoutly Christian mother, Monica. He spent his youth in harmony and conflict with her by turns, eventually taking up with a philosophical Christian sect, the Manicheans, whose simplified teachings concerning a Kingdom of Light and Kingdom of Darkness enabled Augustine to indulge his lustful excesses. When Augustine left his hometown of Thagaste in his late 20s, accompanied by his common-law wife of 15 years and their son, Monica followed him to Carthage—and afterward to Milan and Rome, in which locations he worked as a teacher and eventually at the court of Emperor Valentinian II.

Continuing to disapprove of her son’s philosophical, religious, and romantic choices, Monica drove Augustine’s common-law wife and son out of his life and arranged his marriage to a 10-year-old heiress whose family adhered to a more austere form of Christianity. Eventually, a conversation with a close friend led Augustine to conclude that his association with the Manicheans had made him self-centered and indulgent, had scattered his attention amongst too many earthly pleasures. Galvanized by that conversation, as well as by his mother’s death, Augustine read the Bible and decided to surrender both his life and his love to Christ.