Augustine Of Hippo's Confessions

From late antiquity to the early medieval period, societies in Europe were faced with a rapidly changing religious environment, with many converting to Christianity. However, while the religious ideals of these peoples changed, cultural traditional values and mythologies still remained and mixed with Christian communities as well. Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions as well as the English text Beowulf both convey traditional elements in Christianity in form of classical philosophy and Germanic legends. Moreover, these traditional characteristics signify that the ideas of religion and culture were two separate entities within conversion, and that one could retain cultural beliefs while still adopting Christian practices and possibly come closer

In fact, Augustine often addresses the supposed incompatibility between philosophical writings in classical culture by clarifying that he had found a means to convert to Christianity through the logical methods of western philosophy. This view on philosophy by Augustine proves controversial by other scholars of the time. However, it is also indicative of how, even in Roman Empire, the basis on which Christianity found its mass following, converts could still maintain a degree of cultural autonomy despite changing religious views. Augustine’s worldview is also established in other Christian authors of the time who endorsed the logical methods of philosophy, such as Jerome and Ambrose, of which, Ambrose directly influenced Augustine as an admirer of stoicism. The use of classical philosophy is even further emphasized in the Roman Empire, on the scale of the earlier analysis of Germanic culture, by Greek culture of the eastern empire into the medieval period, which sought to preserve texts and educate its citizens based on both Orthodox Christian beliefs and classical Greek ideas. This was done by distinguishing the logic of classics as a method of finding truth relative to the physical world, yet these physical clues could then lead one to spiritual conversion towards Christianity. Thus, the embrace of Greek classics and Christian beliefs within the Roman Empire and Confessions not only reinforces the ideas of integration between classics and Christianity as Augustine espouses, but also shows that during a time of mass conversion to Christianity, local groups still managed to retain strong elements of their native