The Confessions: Saint Augustine of Hippo

The Confessions of Saint Augustine is considered one of the greatest Christian classics of all time. It is an extended poetic, passionate, intimate prayer that Augustine wrote as an autobiography sometime after his conversion, to confess his sins and proclaim God's goodness. Just as his first hearers were captivated by his powerful conversion story, so also have many millions been over the following sixteen centuries. His experience of God speaks to us across time with little need of transpositions.

This acclaimed new translation by Sister Maria Boulding, O.S.B., masterfully captures his experience, and is written in an elegant and flowing style. Her beautiful contemporary translation of the ancient Confessions makes the classic work more accessible to modern readers. Her translation combines the linguistic accuracy demanded by 4th-century Latin with the poetic power aimed at by Augustine, not as discernable in previous translations.

Translator Sr. Maria Boulding, O.S.B. (1929 - 2009), born in Liverpool, was linguistically gifted and theologically astute. Turning down a full scholarship to Oxford, she joined the cloistered Benedictine Nuns at Stanbrook Abbey in September of 1947 where she unceasingly labored for 62 years. She spent much of her later life translating the writings of St. Augustine.

Editor Fr. David Vincent Meconi, S.J., is editor of Homiletic & Pastoral Review. He is a professor of patristic theology at St. Louis University where he teaches courses on Trinitarian theology, Christology and soteriology in the early Church, with a special interest in the life and thought of St. Augustine of Hippo. He is also the co-editor of the Cambridge University Companion to Augustine.