St. Augustine of Hippo Trivia Quiz

Answer: 0

If you answered anything other than zero, you're probably thinking of St. Augustine of Canterbury, the missionary who brought Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons in England. He lived about 200 years after St. Augustine of Hippo. Now that we've got that settled, on with the questions about St. Augustine of Hippo.

Answer: Algeria

Augustus was born in 354. His family owned farmland near Thagaste, which was then in the Roman province of Numidia. The town is now called Souk Ahras and is in Algeria. Most people in North Africa were Christians until the Arab conquests.

Answer: Pears

Augustine comments in his "Confessions" that he took pleasure in the criminality itself, and although he was the ringleader he wouldn't have done it alone. He didn't even want the pears; he threw them away because he had better ones at home.

Answer: Adeodatus

Theodore (gift of God) is more or less the same name as Adeodatus (given by God) but in Greek rather than Latin. Alypius was a friend of Augustine's who later became bishop of Thagaste. Although Augustine's relationship with Adeodatus's mother lasted for about 15 years, we don't know her name: Augustine never mentions it.

Answer: He sent her away, back to Carthage.

He sent her back to Carthage when his mother was trying to arrange a marriage for him, with a rich girl whose family connections would be useful for his career.

Answer: Paul's Letter to the Romans

Augustine's account of this incident continues:

'So I quickly returned to the bench where Alypius was sitting, for there I had put down the apostle's book when I had left there. I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof."'
Confessions VIII, xii (29) (translated by Albert C. Outler) http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions.xi.html

The passage Augustine quotes is Romans 13:13-14.

Answer: The bishop of Milan

The bishop of Milan at the time was St. Ambrose, a highly educated and eloquent man who famously insisted on the Emperor Theodosius himself doing public penance for massacring the people of Thessalonica after the murder of one of his officials.

Answer: 396

354 was the year of his birth. 387 was the year of his baptism. 430 was the year of his death. Hippo is now called Annaba, and is in Algeria.

Answer: The capture of Rome by Alaric and his army

Alaric and the Visigoths captured the city of Rome in 410. Some argued that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy for the first time in 800 years because it had abandoned the traditional worship of the old Roman gods. Augustine wrote "The City of God" to refute this argument.

Answer: The Vandals

The Vandals were a Germanic tribe that moved through modern-day France and Spain and into North Africa, where they eventually established their own kingdom, independent from the Roman Empire. The Goths were another Germanic tribe, who founded kingdoms in what is now France, Spain, and Italy.

The Huns invaded Italy under their famous leader Attila but then withdrew. The Arabs conquered North Africa round about the year 700.