Confessions — who's who

The narrator and the narrated. Born in Thagaste in 354, educated at Carthage, rhetoric teacher in Carthage, Rome, and Milan. A Manichaean for nine years. Converts in a garden at Milan in 386 at age thirty-two. Ordained bishop of Hippo Regius in 395 or 396. Writes the Confessions 397–400 as a long prayer addressed directly to God — tracing his life and, in the final four Books, interrogating memory, time, and the creation of the world.

The most important human figure in the Confessions after Augustine himself. Patient, devout, and unwavering in her hope for her son's conversion — Augustine reports she shed more tears for his soul than mothers weep for their children's bodies. Follows him to Rome, then to Milan. Present at the conversion. Dies at Ostia in 387; Book 9 gives the restrained, luminous account of her death and of the vision she and Augustine share at the window overlooking the garden. Canonized as Saint Monica.

Augustine's closest friend, from their shared youth in Thagaste through the conversion at Milan. The Confessions records his parallel journey through Manichaeism and Platonism. In the garden at Milan he reads the verse after Augustine's tolle, lege and converts simultaneously. Later becomes bishop of Thagaste, adjacent to Augustine's Hippo, and remains a close ally and correspondent until Augustine's death in 430.

The most powerful Christian intellectual in the western empire during Augustine's adult years. Augustine attends his sermons in Milan first as a professional observer of rhetoric, then for the substance. Ambrose's allegorical readings of Old Testament passages dissolve the last of Augustine's objections. Augustine seeks him out in person; finds him reading silently — a habit Augustine notes as remarkable. Baptizes Augustine, Adeodatus, and Alypius at Easter 387.

The great Manichaean teacher whose arrival in Carthage Augustine awaited with high expectations. Augustine hoped Faustus could resolve the astronomical difficulties in Manichaean cosmology that had long troubled him. Faustus, on encounter, turns out to be charming but philosophically empty — an eloquent speaker with nothing to say. The disappointment with Faustus is the beginning of Augustine's exit from Manichaeism.

The priest to whom Augustine turns in Milan for counsel before his conversion. Augustine tells him the whole history of his wanderings; Simplicianus tells him in return the story of Victorinus, the great pagan rhetorician and philosopher who converted publicly to Christianity in Rome. The story of Victorinus is the narrative catalyst for Book 8 — it shows Augustine that the final step is possible even for someone like him.

The woman Augustine lived with for roughly fifteen years — from his late teens through his early thirties — in Carthage and then in Italy. Mother of Adeodatus. Augustine never gives her name; by the conventions of his class, she was not a legal wife, and the omission was conventional. He treats her, however, with a tenderness the convention does not require. When Monica arranges a more advantageous marriage for him in Milan, the concubine is sent back to Africa, swears she will know no other man, and leaves Adeodatus with Augustine. The brevity of this account has haunted readers for sixteen centuries.

Augustine's only child, born around 372. The name means "given by God." Baptized with Augustine at Milan in 387. Returns to Africa with his father after Monica's death. Dies young, around 389, at sixteen or seventeen. Augustine wrote the dialogue On the Teacher with Adeodatus as principal interlocutor — one of the few surviving glimpses of his voice. Book 9 marks his death alongside Monica's as the two great losses that close the autobiography.

A close friend from the Carthage and Milan years, present in the philosophical conversations and arguments that run through Books IV–VII. Shared Augustine's dissatisfaction with Manichaeism. After Augustine's conversion, returned to Africa and died there, young, as a Christian. Augustine mourns him in Book 9 alongside Monica and Adeodatus — one of three great losses gathered at the end of the autobiography.