Written between 397 and 400 AD, it would be impossible for Augustine to completely avoid addressing the historical world in which he is living. While it was likely unintentional, Augustine did manage to weave small details about his daily life into his confessions while still managing to keep the focus on his repentance for his ‘sinful’ early life. Outside of the small and subtle details, Augustine largely fails to provide a larger ‘big picture’ context for the world he lives in. In reading Augustine’s Confessions, it is very interesting to think about the cultural changes that have occurred over time in contrast to the universality of the conflicts he faced as an adolescent and young adult. 

If I were to write an autobiography like Augustine, I would likely work hard to include every detail about my life, no matter how small. After having read about the lives of those before us and being frustrated at lack of detail that left me wondering about the past, I would want to leave a full account of the world today for future generations. It’s impossible to imagine what technology and the world as a whole will look like 1620 years from now. I think it would be inevitable that I would forget to include small details like what I eat everyday and how our cars work, but those are the little things that prove to be the most interesting to later generations of students. Outside of the mundane details of everyday life, including global context for the world I am living in today would be integral to understanding my story. I could nott write my story without including details about our current political climate or the pandemic. My life now looks nothing like it did 6 months ago. With an immunocompromised brother, my family has been in a mostly strict quarantine and the isolation has prompted huge changes to my character. It is so important to include a larger picture of what is happening in the world as a whole to provide insight for character growth and changes. What we have experienced in 2020 is all but unprecedented in the grand scheme of things and if I was the one reading accounts of this year in the future, it would be beyond frustrating if the author had left out such details.

While his story is not necessarily meant to be a historical text, Augustine manages to weave pieces of his world into his writing. One thing that dates Augustine’s writings is his discussion of his ill friend and the lack of medical knowledge at the time. When Augustine’s friend (lover) was ‘sick with fever,’ it seemed to be that either the fever would go away and he would get better or the fever would consume him and he would die. The general thought on this was that whichever path the illness took, it was God’s will. They even went so far as to baptise the man, while he was too ill to make conscious decisions for himself, so that when he did die, he would be cleansed of sin and in God’s favor. However, while Augustine does discuss taking a ship to travel from Carthage to Rome, no other forms of day-to-day transportation have been discussed thus far. I am not sure if this is intentional or not, but I am curious how Augustine would have travelled in his everyday life. While his text is largely focused on the religious aspects of his life, I think that the growth that he experienced throughout his life would have been better explained in the larger context of the political, economic, and social climate he lived in. He does speak on the influence of his early education and his forced study of Latin as well as Greek mythology, but that is largely the extent of the societal pressures that he discusses. No one is able to live and grow without the influence of politics and societal pressures in their life. 

The inclusion of historical context in any autobiography is detrimental to the understanding of the story as a whole. While Augustine’s writing was not meant to provide such detail and his goal was rather to share his repentance and conversion, he managed to incorporate just enough context that his actions and thoughts are perfectly understandable. Despite being able to comprehend Augustine’s writing with the small amount of detail he gave, it would have been very beneficial if he had included more bits of global context in terms of the political, social, and economic situations of his time.