The Confessions of Saint Augustine

St. Augustine of Hippo lived a life of sin until his conversion to Christianity at the age of 32. Twelve years later he gave a personal account of his search for truth in The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Augustine, a Latin church father, is one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity. In his early years he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism and later by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus, but after his conversion and baptism (387), he developed his own approach to philosophy and theology accommodating a variety of methods and different perspectives. He believed that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom and framed the concepts of original sin and just war.