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chapter six The Apostate Two encounters proved decisive for Augustine in Milan: the Nicene Christian community of Ambrose and the “books of the Platonists.” Although Augustine had had a passing acquaintance since childhood with African Christianity, the form that the new Nicene “Catholic” communion was taking in Milan under the city’s bishop Ambrose was unlike anything he had encountered before. Neo-Nicene Trinitarianism, allegorical interpretation, and liturgical music were as new to Milan as they were to Augustine’s experience of non-Manichaean Christianity, reflecting ideas and practices brought to Milan from elsewhere by a highly literate and widely connected bishop.1 Likewise, although Augustine certainly knew of Plato and various Platonic ideas from his earlier studies, in Milan he discovered the development of Platonic thought initiated by the third-century philosopher Plotinus, referred to today as Neoplatonism . It was something of the latest thing in the city’s intellectual circles; the sudden appearance of its elements in the sermons of Ambrose around the time of Augustine’s arrival attests to its new ascendency.2 Augustine entered an environment of novel enthusiasm that proved contagious.3 In the Confessions, Augustine carefully distinguishes the roles played in his transformation by Christian faith and Platonic philosophy, prompting a long and heated debate in modern Augustinian studies over which influence proved more decisive for Augustine at the time. It is a debate for which Augustine must bear his share of the blame, since it appears quite likely that he distinguishes for his own compositional reasons in the Confessions two movements that were considerably intertwined in Milan.4 I make no attempt here 166 chapter six to review ground well covered in other studies on the nature and interrelationship of these two movements as Augustine encountered them while residing in Milan between late 384 and summer 387 c.e. Instead, my concern lies with delineating the ideological and affective bridges across which Augustine could pass from a prior engagement with Manichaeism to an attraction to the particular alternatives for self-identification Milan offered. How could a person who had been drawn to Manichaeism likewise be drawn to Nicene Christianity and Platonism? How can we best understand as a single historical person someone who makes these respective choices in life? Augustine in Milan Augustine came to Milan as a promising political appointee to a highly visible and prestigious position. It was a reversal of his fortunes he scarcely would have been able to predict just a year earlier, and one that put tremendous pressure on his continued association with an illicit sect. His secular ambitions were now in the ascendant. He was the principal source of income and connections for his family, and it is a testament to his new prospects that he was joined in his new home by not only his partner and son, but also his mother and brother, some cousins, friends, and pupils. After a time, however, the mother of his son was packed off back to Africa, to make way for a marriage more suited to his new prospects (Conf 6.15.25). A girl from an appropriately important family was found, but she was only ten years old; Augustine was expected to wait two years before consummating the betrothal. Manichaeism, too, now seemed to be a dalliance he could no longer afford, and it no longer carried sufficient conviction with him to be maintained in secret. He ceased his active involvement with the sect within a matter of months of arriving in Milan. For all the attention usually given to Augustine’s conversion in Milan, it is important to note how quietly, unobtrusively, and undramatically the prerequisite withdrawal from the Manichaean community occurred. Augustine is absolutely clear that he still considered himself a member of the Manichaean religious community when he left Rome to take up his post in Milan. We know from Ambrose that there were Manichaeans in Milan, and Augustine had no doubt been told with whom to make contact when he arrived in his new home. Yet the responsibilities of his new status and the degree to which The Apostate 167 it placed him in the public eye appear to provide the context—call it explanatory , if you will—in which he dropped his association with the Manichaeans, which all his prior doubts and disaffection had not brought him to do. Neither “Catholicism” nor “Platonism” had anything to do with this decision, which he made prior to any significant exposure...

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