Van Oort, Johannes (Hans)2007-09-132007-09-132007-05Van Oort, J 2007, '"... Quam intime medullae animi mei suspirabant tibi" : de spiritualiteit van Augustinus' "Verborgen jaren" tot aan de bekering in 386', Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 221-250. [http://www.unisa.ac.za/she]1017-0499http://hdl.handle.net/2263/3473In popular works, and even in handbooks of (church) history, it is often assumed that Augustine was converted from paganism to Christianity. This perception is incorrect. Augustine (354-430) was a North African by birth. In all likelihood his mother Monnica was of Berber extraction, i.e. she originated from the indigenous black Berbers. She became a Catholic Christian (though with some touch of the Donatist Christianity prevalent in Augustine’s inland home town Thagaste). Augustine’s father Patricius was a conservative heathen and only baptised a Catholic when Augustine was sixteen. Young Augustine thus grew up in a religiously very diverse environment. His school education in Thagaste and nearby Madauros strengthened the pagan element. During his student years in Carthage Augustine became a member of the Gnostic-Christian Church of Mani (216-276), the prophet from Babylon who established a new Church which expanded from present day Iraq until the Atlantic and the Pacific. More than ten years Augustine was a member of the New Age-movement of his time. After a long and intense spiritual journey came, in 386, his final conversion to Catholic (= orthodox) Christianity. The article aims to indicate that – both thetically and antithetically – all previous spiritual factors had a lasting influence on the spirituality of the future doctor gratiae. During all these periods he sighed for true knowledge of God: “how in my inmost being the very marrow of my soul did pant after You!” ( Conf. III,6,10).157897 bytesapplication/pdfDutchChurch History Society of Southern AfricaAugustine, Saint, Bishop of HippoArticle