The Authority of Augustine1
Augustine speaks: `The thirteenth of November was my birthday. After a lunch (light enough to keep from putting a burden on our mental faculties), I called the whole group that dined together that way every day, to go and sit in the baths, for that seemed a suitably private spot.'2 Some of those present had probably spent the morning reading a bit of Vergil and were now ready for higher and nobler things. What followed was the conversation recorded in the first book of Augustine's de beata vita.
And so we are here, 1505 years after that afternoon in the baths, 1537 years after Augustine's birth, speaking of this man long deceased as though we know him. This lecture is about him, it belongs to a series named after him, and it has the sponsorship of a venerable and international order of religious men dedicated to his name and example. I have spent my entire adult life reading him, and writing books about him. We live in a time, moreover, in which......
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