Monica deserves to be remembered for her own sake and for being the mother of Augustine. We know her almost exclusively through the eyes of Augustine, mainly in his Confessions. She had been brought up as a Christian and married Patricius, a provincial with a taste for things Roman and Latin.

Monica inherited the moral rigour of North African Christianity, with its emphasis on the dread of God and the development of the cult of the dead. In her marriage, she showed remarkable skill. Her husband had a violent temper and was occasionally unfaithful, but she persuaded him to accept Christianity before his death in 372.

Monica’s relationship with Augustine was more complex. She and Patricius, ambitious for their brilliant son, scrimped and saved to secure the best education possible for him. Monica was obsessively concerned for Augustine. When he became a Manichee for a while, she shut him out of the house, but accepted the wisdom of a bishop she consulted, who assured her that Augustine was too perceptive to be deceived for long by Manichaeism. Monica never ceased to pray for him.

Augustine felt the need to trick his mother when he left North Africa for Italy in 383, leaving her behind. She pursued him to Rome and then Milan, where she came under the influence of Bishop Ambrose. She became deeply involved in the worship and prayer of the church. However she continued to try and manage Augustine’s life, persuading him to abandon his common law “wife” in order to make a marriage suitable for an up-and-coming man of great potential.

Before any marriage could take place, Augustine accepted a commitment to an ascetic and disciplined Christian life-style that precluded marriage. Monica was delighted; her prayers had been answered. Augustine was baptised, and shortly afterwards headed back to North Africa to work out the consequences of his new-found commitment. Monica, having shared fully in some of Augustine’s new thinking, died just after departing for home.

BORN: 331, probably in Thagaste, North Africa (present day Algeria).

DIED:387, Ostia (Ancient Port of Rome), Italy.