During the years that followed, Augustine would face a number of disputes between mainstream Christianity Like Augustine, Simeon Stylites the Elder (SIM-ee-un stuh-LIT-eez; c. 388-459) was later named a saint—that is, someone officially recognized by the church for their holiness. Yet whereas Augustine lived a life closely tied to the central events of his time, Simeon was an offbeat figure at the fringes of society. The name Stylites is a variation on a Greek word meaning "pillar-hermit," and in fact Simeon was the most famous of these men, who went out into the desert and lived atop tall pillars or columns.
Simeon was born in northern Syria in about 388, and he spent his childhood and teen years working as a shepherd boy. At age sixteen, he decided to become a monk—someone who leaves the outside world to search for spiritual understanding in a center called a monastery. Many monks engage in self-denial, for instance by going without food for long periods of time, but Simeon took things much further. He wrapped a rope tightly around his body and lived that way for more than a year, until his flesh rotted and no one could stand to be near him because of the smell. When the abbot, leader of the monastery,
Inspected Simeon's bed and found it covered with maggots, he ordered him to leave the monastery.
Simeon spent three years living in a hut, where he pushed himself to ever more difficult feats, for instance by standing for long periods. When this proved too easy, he forced himself to live atop a cliff in the desert. By then, however, word of Simeon's impressive self-denial—which many interpreted as a sign of great devotion to God—had spread throughout the area, and followers came seeking spiritual wisdom. Determined to remove himself from the world, Simeon arranged for the erection of a pillar with a small platform on top. It was there he would live for the remainder of his life.
Initially, Simeon's pillar was about nine feet high, but over time it was replaced by increasingly taller ones; by the time of his death he was living on a column fifty or sixty feet high. Followers still came to him, climbing a ladder along the side, and his many admirers included Roman emperors and bishops. After thirty years atop the pillar, Simeon died on September 2, 459.
And other versions of the faith. Among his first opponents were the Manichaeans, and in this conflict Augustine found himself pitted against old friends. Some, such as Honoratus (for whom he wrote a book called On the Virtue of Believing in order to explain Christian faith), converted to Christianity; others, including Fortunatus—subject of a book by Augustine called Against Fortunatus the Manichee—did not.
After Augustine won a public debate with the Manichaean leader Felix in 404, Manichaeism ceased to be a significant force in Hippo.
Another threat came from the Donatists (DOH-nuh-tistz), a North African splinter group who rejected the mainstream church leadership—that is, the bishop of Rome, who became known as the pope. Beginning in 410, Augustine also squared off with the Pelagians (puh-LAY-jee-unz). Their leader, Pelagius (c. 354-c. 418), taught that humanity was born without sin, and did not need the help of God to achieve goodness. This directly contradicted mainstream Christianity, which held that all humans were sinful in the absence of God. Augustine led the fight against Pelagianism with works such as On the Merits of Sinners and Forgiveness (411).
In his latter days, Augustine found himself in conflict not only with the Pelagians, but with groups around the Christian world who embraced the idea of predestination (pree-des-ti-NAY-shun). Predestination is the belief that a person's ultimate fate—that is, whether they will go to Heaven or Hell—is already decided before their birth. It has some basis in the Bible, but so too does the idea of free will, or the belief that humans have complete freedom to choose whether or not they will follow God. Augustine set out to demonstrate that free will and predestination were both true, and furthermore that predestination did not give people a license to sin.
City of God
In his early years as the bishop of Hippo, Augustine had written the Confessions. This work could properly be called the first real autobiography, or personal history, because it is not nearly as concerned with outside events as it is with the inner life of Augustine himself. It is one of Augustine's two greatest contributions to literature, the second being City of God, which he wrote between 413 and 425.
The event that inspired the writing of the latter book was the sacking, or destruction, of Rome by an invading tribe called the Visigoths in 410. In hindsight, historians recognize the sacking of Rome as the beginning of the end of the West-
Ern Roman Empire, which ceased to exist in 476; at the time, people viewed it as the worst disaster in the history of the world. Believers in Rome's pagan religion blamed Christians, saying that the destruction of the city was a punishment from the gods.
Augustine took exactly the opposite position: the destruction of Rome, he said, was God's punishment for the Romans' persisting belief in their old pagan religion. In City of God, he pointed out many examples in Roman history when the people had called on the gods' help, but to no avail. Perhaps drawing on his past belief in Manichaeism, which viewed the world as an eternal struggle between good and evil, Augustine now explained all of existence as a conflict between the "City of God," or the church, and the "City of Man"—that is, the belief systems that opposed Christianity.
World History
