The story of Saint Ambrose in the late 300s in Milan and his rise from persecution through visions of God demonstrated the controlling influence that religion had on the minds of Augustine and his contemporaries. Augustine talks about Ambrose’s story and makes it a part of one of his books in Confessions.  He includes how Ambrose is persecuted by Justina, the mother of the current emperor, and how he fights against Justina’s attempts at taking over the church he belongs to. Justina wanting to convert the church for her own religious beliefs shows the dedication people had to their religion, to the point where only their faith was right and should be the only one present. People have fought and died for their beliefs, and these people are known as martyrs. A religion begins to further develop surrounding the worship of martyrs and saints, with one of the key events being Ambrose’s vision from God. At the time, people were trying to find martyrs to place in a basilica, when all of the sudden, Ambrose has a vision in which he sees where two martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius, were buried in a cemetery nearby. Augustine writes to God that “For many years you had kept them from corruption, hidden away in your secret treasury, out of which at the right moment you produced them to restrain the fury of a woman, indeed a lady of the royal family”(9.7.16). He believed that God kept them hidden until the opportune time, when the martyrs could provide aid to His worshippers who wanted to keep their holy land. They dug up the graves and put the martyrs in the basilica. This event helped strengthen the cult of the martyrs and saints, and began to seep into the mental world of  people during this time. One person even claimed that just by touching a relic of the martyr, their eyesight was regained, which really shows how once people began to believe in this cult, their mentality would change.

Another person during this time, Augustine’s mother Monica, who is aligned with Ambrose’s religion, decides to partake in the sit-in where they arranged to protest against Justina. Monica is more intrigued by the idea of saints in the cult of martyrs and saints. Saints were known as extremely holy people who were close to God. Monica demonstrates that she is saint-like because of her undying devotion to God, as she is not only a strong-willed Christian, but she seeks to convert others around her, for example her son. She does this in the hopes of bringing him salvation as he becomes closer to God. In Chapter 9 of Confessions, her son is finally baptized and is a fully converted Christian man. They both experience a sort of spiritual awakening together and Augustine writes, “Alone with each other, we talked very intimately. ‘Forgetting what lay in the past and stretching out what was ahead’(Phil. 3:13), we were searching together in the presence of the truth which is you yourself”(9.10.23). Augustine realizes he must put all of his sins behind him and focus on being holy in the present, and Monica realizes that now she can find peace in eternity, knowing that she will meet her son again. The cult of the martyrs and saints gives people this comfort, knowing that if you are a saint and you devote yourself to God, whether by dying for him and staying dedicated until the end, you will be allowed into heaven when you die. 

During this time period, this religious group was only beginning to blossom. Saint Augustine includes small stories related to these religions to help in demonstrating the mental world of those who belonged to different religions. In his books, he talks about how he explores multiple beliefs and faiths, such as Manichaeism and astrology, and expresses the fact that when people would believe in something, their entire world would change, and they would think of their life through these beliefs. Another example that was brought up in an earlier book was about these two families who made it so their babies would share the same horoscope and hoped they would both be equally fortunate in life, because of their confidence in astrology. Just as the people who were involved in the cult of the martyrs and saints, astrologers held their religion close to their hearts and their minds. Overall, religion itself is impactful, and the cult of the martyrs and saints was specifically highlighted in these passages written in Confessions, and had a lasting effect on Augustine and the people around him during this time period.