AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

Searching analysis of the religious and philosophical journeys of the profound North African thinker who famously prayed: “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

Lehmann opens with Augustine’s most relatable quote, but she admits he can be a “tough read” as much of his writing explored rarefied intellectual territory. Still, as in her earlier profiles for teens of Socrates and Spinoza, the author shows a rare knack for paraphrasing and summarizing “long and abstruse” arguments in ways that serious young students of philosophy and the history of religion will be able to grasp. Maps and images of paintings, artifacts, and pages from early books appear throughout the text, helping to sustain readers’ interest, along with frequent references to the importance of sex and sensuality in Augustine’s voluminous writings. For all his later canonization, Lehmann finds her subject’s increasingly firm espousal of coercive measures against heresy anything but saintly, explaining that he “was instrumental in the destruction of a once flourishing African church” and highlighting the “centuries of religious oppression…directly inspired by his own words.” Still, she shows how Manichean and later Neoplatonic ideas infused his evolving views of God and the world and draws on his personal accounts of emotional struggles and youthful antics in the Confessionsand elsewhere to fill out his character as a man who felt as deeply as he thought.

A thoughtful and enlightening portrait of a brilliant, nuanced mind.