Milan, Ambrose, and the departure of the concubine

Book 6 covers the Milan years. Augustine has arrived as the city's public orator — a position of some prestige — and is met immediately by Monica, who has somehow followed him from Carthage. He attends Ambrose's sermons. He goes initially as a professional: he wants to study the rhetoric, to see whether the bishop's reputation for eloquence is deserved. The content begins to arrest him. Ambrose reads the Old Testament allegorically — the passages that had embarrassed Augustine, that the Manichaeans had mocked as crude anthropomorphism, turn out to have philosophical depth when read as figures rather than as literal propositions.

Augustine tries to arrange a private conversation with Ambrose. It is impossible: the bishop is always surrounded by people with needs more urgent than Augustine's, and in his rare private moments he reads silently to himself — a practice Augustine notes as unusual. He reads with his eyes alone, the voice and tongue at rest. Augustine watches him, wonders whether Ambrose reads this way to spare his voice or to avoid questions, and eventually gives up waiting for the private audience.

The most personally devastating passage of Book 6 is the departure of the concubine. Monica, anxious about her son's permanent situation, has arranged a better match: a young heiress in Milan whose hand is promised to Augustine. The concubine — with whom Augustine has lived for fifteen years, who is the mother of his son Adeodatus — is sent back to Africa. Augustine records that she swore she would never know another man. Adeodatus stays with Augustine. While the intended bride waits to come of age, another woman arrives to fill the interim. Augustine describes this without self-exculpation: he was weak, he was complicit, the wound of the departure was real, and he tried immediately to close it with the wrong remedy.