A Companion to Augustine - (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World) by Mark Vessey

Book Synopsis

A Companion to Augustine presents a fresh collection of scholarship by leading academics with a new approach to contextualizing Augustine and his works within the multi-disciplinary field of Late Antiquity, showing Augustine as both a product of the cultural forces of his times and a cultural force in his own right.

• Discusses the life and works of Augustine within their full historical context, rather than privileging the theological context
• Presents Augustine's life, works and leading ideas in the cultural context of the late Roman world, providing a vibrant and engaging sense of Augustine in action in his own time and place
• Opens up a new phase of study on Augustine, sensitive to the many and varied perspectives of scholarship on late Roman culture
• State-of-the-art essays by leading academics in this field

From the Back Cover

Augustine (354-430 CE) stands with Homer, Plato, and Aristotle among the pre-eminent authorities in Western culture, and his Confessions is the only literary work from the early Christian centuries (aside from the New Testament) that is still widely read today. Long recognized as an outstanding Christian theologian, he has in recent decades also acquired a reputation as an exceptional exponent of the culture of the late Roman world, one whose texts vividly bring the era to life.

This companion is the first to present Augustine as a historical figure within an expanded world of late antiquity. State-of-the-art essays by leading specialists in this field provide orientation to his material, social, and intellectual milieu; his life and career; his writings; issues of the day with which he was engaged; and the main phases of his latter-day reception and influence. Each chapter pulls together resources for readers who want to anchor historically important Augustinian ideas and impulses in the complex realities of the author's life and afterlife. The result is a multifaceted portrait of Augustine in action in his own and later times.

Review Quotes

"This companion was first published in 2012 and has now been republished in paperback. Its scope and breadth is as impressive as the list of contributors ... An essential tool for any philosopher's library." Exegetical Tools (October 2015)

"This is a successful Companionthat fills in certain lacunae in the study of Augustine and late antiquity. As such, it is more suited to scholars with specific interests than beginners looking for entry points into Augustine's complex and sophisticated thought." Religious Studies Review (December 2013)

"This inter- and intra-disciplinary companion to Augustine gathers and presents new flavours within Augustine research, which certainly leaves us yearning for more." Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses

About the Author

Mark Vessey is Professor of English and Principal of Green College at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Latin Christian Writers in Late Antiquity and Their Texts (2005), and has edited Augustine and the Disciplines: From Cassiciacum to Confessions (2005) and The Calling of the Nations: Exegesis, Ethnography, and Empire in a Biblical-Historic Present (2011).