Monica was honored for her forbearance in marriage to an undisciplined, often cruel pagan man. Augustine's father suffers by comparison to Augustine's mother, but rather than suggest that she should have left his father because of his mistreatment, Monica's quiet example of patient endurance is praised by her son.

Augustine's turning towards his mother was seen, through hindsight, as the major development of his life, but he went through several stages of spiritual development, first paganism, and then a cultish version of Christianity called Manichaeism, which was later characterized as a heretical view of the world as evil, as opposed to the goodness of heaven. It also involved a number of highly elaborate eating practices. Augustine was particularly vehement in his later denunciations of the Manicheans and other Christian heretics when he became a bishop in North Africa, very likely because of his own past affiliation with them. Augustine was...
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