Saint Augustine of Hippo Gets A Boost At HQ
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is on every top ten list of influential writers and thinkers of the medieval period, and sometimes he takes the number one slot.
Many consider him the greatest of the Fathers of the Catholic Church, because his writings laid the foundation for much of Christian thought in the medieval period and beyond.
Saint Augustine is one of the most studied people of Late Antiquity, the period when the classical era evolved into the medieval era. He was born and raised in the province of Africa in the Roman Empire, studied rhetoric in Carthage, and served in the court of the emperor - which sounds pretty “classical.” He wrote extensively on the Christian faith, was baptized by the leading bishop of his day, and died while his city was under siege by the Vandals - which sounds pretty “medieval.” He was a man who lived in both worlds.
Augustine’s father was a pagan; his mother was a Christian. Augustine followed several religions: he was a pagan as a youth, then became interested in Manichaeism, then studied Neoplatonic ideas. Eventually, his mother, Monica, prevailed and converted him to Christianity. For this she would become Saint Monica, to whom the Californian town owes its name, but probably not its surf culture.
Augustine was doing well as a professor of rhetoric in North Africa, but he wanted to spread his wings. So in 383, he left his hometown and headed to Milan, where the government of the Roman Empire was headquartered at the time. He was a great speaker, and was appointed professor of rhetoric in Milan, where he made the acquaintance of Bishop Ambrose.
After a few years of rubbing shoulders with the top dogs of the empire, he went back to North Africa where in 395, he was elected bishop of Hippo, a position he would hold for the rest of his life.
He wrote extensively, and two of his books have been widely read from his time until today. Confessions is the 13-volume autobiography he wrote when he had only lived half his life, focusing on his spiritual development and conversion to Christianity. He devotes half a dozen chapters to a time when he and his juvenile delinquent friends snuck into an orchard and ate a whole bunch of pears. He writes about his struggle with lustful desires, leading to his most famous quote when he prayed,
“Lord, give me chastity… but not yet.”
His most famous book is City of God, which he wrote between 413-426 in response to the sack of Rome in 410 by the Visigoths. Many pagans in Rome, reluctant to convert to the state religion of Christianity, blamed the sack of Rome on the abandonment of the old pagan gods. Augustine refutes this claim, sweeping aside the old myths and criticizing both the Roman Empire and classical philosophy. This critique introduces the beginnings of the notion of a separation of church and state, which was a radical idea at the time.
By integrating faith and reason in an attempt to unlock the meaning of scripture, Augustine explored many theological concepts, laying the foundation for debates that continue to this day. He left behind a huge body of work on topics such as God’s will, predestination, heresy, Original Sin, and a theory of Just War. His writings were the most influential source for thinkers and scholars throughout the medieval era.
Saint Augustine was born in the provinces, lived most of his life in Africa, and did his most important work there, but he probably wouldn’t have had the same impact if he never went to the capital to rub elbows with the top dogs. So too must you spend time at your corporate HQ.
If you work for a company with many offices, there’s one location that towers above the rest in importance, and that’s headquarters. The big bosses are here, the big decisions are made here, so you must find your way here, at least for a while.
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”
You can start anywhere in the company. You’ll do good work, and your reputation will grow. If you want to advance, you’ll visit headquarters every once and a while, and your head will spin with back-to-back-to-back meetings with all the people you can see in person, instead of the usual face on a screen. Especially if your trip to HQ crossed a few time zones, you will be exhausted. But you gotta go. And when you get home, you gotta go back. Because only HQ is HQ.
