The Conversion of Augustine

By Romano Guardini The Conversion of Augustine “With an incredible intensity of desire I longed after immortal wisdom. I had begun that journey upwards by which I was to return to You.” Thus does St. Augustine of Hippo describe his response to encountering Cicero’s philosophical tract Hortensius: an occasion of returning to God. Such occasions will prove numerous and varied over the decades-long pursuit for wisdom and purity, culminating in the timeless testimony of The Confessions to the conversion of Augustine. In these pages, Romano Guardini adds nothing to already-existent, voluminous historical research on the saint; choosing instead to present Augustine’s “personality and thought in the everlasting form of his writings as a perennial possibility of Christian existence.” The Conversion of Augustine is primarily an interpretation of Augustine himself and secondarily an interpretation of The Confessions, the germinal work in a prodigious career. Together, these two levels of interpr