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Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

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BIOGRAPHY<br />

hearted commitment to a somewhat daunting Christianity is unique in Latin<br />

literature. Probably intended in the first place for the author's fellow-clerics<br />

<strong>and</strong> serui Dei, the book has enjoyed immense influence throughout a millennium<br />

<strong>and</strong> a half. To the reader sensitive to such matters it is a work which still<br />

touches the heart <strong>and</strong> mind with astonishing power. Others find the pervasive<br />

rhetoric cloying <strong>and</strong> dissuasive. To the student of the psychology of religion<br />

it is a document of deepest interest. Augustine himself, rereading his Confessions<br />

at the age of seventy-four, as the restless Berbers pressed even harder<br />

on the great Roman l<strong>and</strong>lords of Africa, <strong>and</strong> as Gaiseric <strong>and</strong> his V<strong>and</strong>als<br />

stood poised by the Straits of Gibraltar, observed ' they still move me when I<br />

read them now, as they moved me when I first wrote them' (Retractationes<br />

731<br />

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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