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C h a p t e r 9 How One Becomes What One Is Augustine had a new self to present to the world. Following earlier formulaic summaries of his conversion,1 as well as what must have been a more self-conscious and crafted account in conditions of adversity, his subsequent vindication and elevation to the episcopate had created the circumstances in which he could and would transform his story into the literary triumph of his Confessions. It apparently took him some time to craft this masterwork, completing it at the dawn of the fifth century.2 He probably began the project after his return from the Catholic council held in Carthage in the summer of 397.3 His public appearance there, with full episcopal authority in the wake of the death of his senior partner Valerius, and for the moment out of shadow of the suspicions about him, brought his vindication to full realization , and may have given him the confidence to develop his earlier apologia against suspicions of his own Manichaean ties in the direction of an appeal to the Manichaeans themselves. James O’Donnell rightly has cautioned against “the assumption that there lies somewhere unnoticed about the Confessions a neglected key to unlock all mysteries. But for a text as multilayered and subtle as the Confessions, any attempt to find a single key is pointless.”4 I do not propose that Manichaeism provides such a single key to Confessions, unlocking all its mysteries. But just as I have suggested that an earlier context of Augustine’s need to respond to suspicions about his Manichean ties explains some of the mysteries of the structure, content, and emphases of Confessions,5 so here I wish to explain how a presumed Manichaean audience—whether real or imagined on Augustine’s part—serves to resolve many other such puzzling features of the work. How One Becomes What One Is 315 That Augustine intended to provide in Confessions a model of conversion for others to follow forms a standard assumption of the vast secondary literature on the work. That the Manichaeans constitute the main foil of Augustine ’s story in Confessions is likewise fairly evident and widely recognized. But only a dozen or so of those who have studied it closely have brought those two characteristics of the work together into the suggestion that Augustine wrote with a Manichaean readership in mind, both to further his refutation of their religion and to offer a protreptic for their conversion.6 They by no means wish to suggest—nor do I—that Augustine did not have other readers in mind as well; rather, the proposal here is that many of Augustine’s rhetorical and compositional choices make best sense as engagement with a Manichaean audience . The most sustained previous argument along these lines has been made by Annemaré Kotzé. Taking her start from C. P. Bammel’s observation of the relative lack of concern with Manichaeism in Augustine’s Cassiciacum writings at the time of his conversion, compared to the way it serves as a constant reference point for Augustine’s reflections in Confessions,7 Kotzé highlights the “constant probing of Manichaean ideas” in the latter work.8 The implications are clear: the conversion is not inexorably tied up with Manichaeism in Augustine’s memory. It can be told in different ways to reach different audiences, to counter different sets of belief and if (anti-) Manichaean ideas permeate the conversion narrative in the Confessions this has significant implications for how the intended audience of this work is to be seen. She contends, therefore, that “Augustine’s aim in writing Confessions was neither to analyse and understand himself nor to create for posterity a portrait of himself or even of his conversion,”9 but to formulate an appeal capable of bringing Manichaeans to the true faith. Building on some of her key arguments , along with those of others who have made similar proposals, I endeavor in the pages that follow to further expose this Manichaean subtext of Confessions. The polemical setting of Augustine’s engagement with the Manichaeans may make it difficult for some to imagine that he could expect them actually to read Confessions. By no means do I wish to undo all that has been gained in recent decades by attending to how much polemical discourse serves purposes largely internal to the group within which it is produced. Augustine was no more sparing with insults and taunts directed at the Manichaeans in...

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