Augustinus Hipponensis: St. Augustine's Impact On The World

Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, also known as Saint Augustine, was the first philosopher to have a great impact on the world (7). He was born in 354, and died in 430 A.D. (8). He was “... a North African rhetorician and devotee to Manichaeism who converted to Christianity under the influence on Ambrose and devoted his career to the exposition of a philosophical system that employed neoplatonic elements in support of Christian orthodoxy” (7). He is seen as the father of Christian orthodoxy, and also the father of the Latin church, along with three others (8). He was an early Algerian-Roman medieval philosopher (8). He helped develop Christianity in the west, and also helped bring Christianity to the dominant religion, when it was a Pagan Roman
empire before (8). He is father was Pagan, but his mother was Catholic (8). He attended schools in Madaris and Carthage (8). He went to school for grammar, but learned about Pagan practices and literature too (8). In Carthage “... he came under the influence of the controversial Persian religious cult of Manichaeism, much to the despair of his mother” (8).
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was another one of the founders of Christian philosophy (6). He was born in Rome, and lived from 470 to 525 C.E. (6). He was taught at the schools of Rome and Alexandria, in Athens (5). These two places is where he learned his philosophical knowledge. He had two different ways of schooling, one Platonic, the other, Christian (5). In some ways he had trouble combining the two ways of thinking (5). However this didn’t make him any less Christian (5). Boethius had a large impact on religion (5). He wrote a book titled De Consolatione Philosophiae (Consolation for Philosophy) and it was, other than the bible, the most read, translated, and commented on work in word history (6). This dialogue was about himself being visited by “the spirit of philosophy” he wrote while in prision (8). He also wrote many other popular things. He wrote five short treatises, called the Opuscula Sacra, which translated to “Sacred Works” (5). In these works he talked about the problems of Trinitarian theology and Christology, which were popular topics at the time (5). Even though he knew he was not a professional theologian, he still commented on these works (5). He had no education in exegesis or patrology (5). However he was taken aback
by the differences between this religion and his own. He was a logician and a metaphysician, he developed a metaphysics of participation, but theologians still had a great regard for his work (5). He commented on many other things too. He also wrote original treatises on logic that argued against contemporary religious people such as the Aryan people (8). He made it his life’s work to preserve ancient knowledge, mostly regarding literature and philosophy (8). He wanted to translate all of Aristotle’s and Plato’s work from Greek to Latin (8). He wanted to provide an education for future people who didn’t understand Greek (5). But he was not able to finish his work (5). He could not get past ‘Logica Vetus’ one of Aristotle’s works (5). If he could have finished these translations, the intellectual history of the west would have been changed forever (5). With the work he was able to translate, he created famous controversy over universals (5). Some of his own voice got mixed in with the translations (5). Along with the works of Plato and Aristotle he translated textbooks of arithmetic and geometry (5). He wrote commentaries on “Isagoge”, which was also important writing about universals (8). After writing his dialogue, he died by capital punishment for treason (?).