(Like, Are you there, God? It's me, Saint Augustine.)ĭon't worry, Confessions is not a laundry list of every inane sin the guy ever committed. In this book, Augustine talks about all of his doubts about God's existence, his dabbling in other religions, his love of pride and of sex ( especially sex), and how badly he just wants to know the truth. Because, you know, converting to Christianity is exactly the kind of thing saints tend to endorse. His book is both an admission of his sins to God and an example that he hopes other people will learn from. Augustine basically chronicles the story of his (average) life up until the point when, at the age of thirty-three, he converts to Christianity. Was he a particularly bad guy? Not really. So, the Confessions are exactly what they sound like: the confessions of this one guy. Then the capital of the empire was moved from Rome to Constantinople, and, as per usual, there were a ton of barbarians doing their raping-and-pillaging thing, so you might say that Europe was in a bit of an awkward transition period. What was going on in the 300s, you ask? Well, the emperor Constantine, who is not Keanu Reeves, basically legalized Christianity-no more getting sent to the coliseum to be crucified, hooray. Augustine lived way back in the 300s (CE) in North Africa, which, at that time, was part of the Roman Empire. We're not saying that Saint Augustine's Confessionsdid all this work by itself, but it sure as heck made some headway in this whole building a religion business. Even the idea of light as good and dark as evil (ever wonder why when Obi-Wan calls it the Dark Side we immediately know it's bad news?), which is one of the oldest tropes there is, had to come from somewhere. And how about convincing people not to have sex? Yeah, good luck with that. A lot of kinks had to be worked out first-like the fact that people didn't automatically accept the idea of a God who wasn't really made of anything, but was somehow everywhere at once. The religions of the world did not just spring into being all set and ready to go.

St augustine of hippo confessions