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event · OSTIA, Roman Italy, this week, 387 AD

Saint Evodius sings the psalm over Saint Monica's body

Edition of

Saint Monica
A fresco of a funeral in a plain whitewashed church: a woman in a dark widow's veil and mantle lies on a low wooden bier with her hands joined, while a young man at her head sings from an open psalter and a standing rank of men answers him; women weep quietly at the open doorway, through which an open grave can be seen, and a small table with a cup and a loaf stands at the left.
The household sings the psalm over St. Monica's body in the church of Aurea outside the walls at Ostia, autumn 387 AD, with the grave open beyond the door and the altar set for the sacrifice of redemption.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of Italian quattrocento buon fresco, from the paper's reference portrait based on Death of St Monica (scene 13, south wall) (Benozzo Gozzoli, 1464-1465 AD, Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano) View source artwork.

OSTIA, Roman Italy, this week, 387 AD — Saint Evodius of Tagaste took up the Psalter beside the body of Saint Monica and sang, and the whole house answered him: “I will sing of mercy and judgment: unto You, O Lord.”

The boy had been hushed first. Adeodatus, her grandson, cried out the moment she stopped breathing, and the household quieted him. There would be no loud mourning, her son, St. Augustine, said: she “neither died unhappy, nor did she altogether die.”

Brethren and religious women heard and came in, while others made the body ready.

St. Monica was carried out this week to the ground by the church of Aurea, outside the walls. The sacrifice of redemption was offered beside the open grave, before she went down, as the custom here is.

No spices, no monument, not the grave she had kept for herself beside her husband in Africa. She asked instead that her name be remembered at the altar she had served “without the omission of a single day.”

About this story

Catholic Saints News tells the lives of the saints as news from their own time and place. This story was written with AI from the historical record, and we read and approved it before it ran.

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Image. AI-generated image, in the manner of Italian quattrocento buon fresco, from the paper's reference portrait based on Death of St Monica (scene 13, south wall) (Benozzo Gozzoli, 1464-1465 AD, Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano) — see the original.

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More on this saint

A woman in a dark widow's veil and mantle stands with her grown son in the deep window opening of a whitewashed upper room, both looking out over a walled garden towards tiled roofs and the flat water of the river mouth beyond; behind them, three of the household go about their work in the shadowed room.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of Italian quattrocento buon fresco, from the paper's reference portrait based on Death of St Monica (scene 13, south wall) (Benozzo Gozzoli, 1464-1465 AD, Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano, Italy) View source artwork.

feature · OSTIA, Roman Italy, autumn 387 AD

At an Ostia window, St. Monica has nothing left to want

This month at Ostia, waiting for a ship to Africa that had not come, Saint Monica and her son Saint Augustine stood at an upstairs window over the garden and talked about what the eternal life of the saints would be. She told him there that she had no pleasure left in anything in this life and did not know what she was still doing here. Five days later the fever took her, and the household that heard her at the window did not treat her death as an interruption.

Edition of · 4 min read

A fresco-style painting of a thin, white-haired old man lying propped on a low wooden bed in a bare whitewashed room, with five older men in plain tunics and mantles standing and bending around him in prayer, sheets of writing pinned to the wall behind, an open book and inkwell on a stool, and a small high window showing a harbour with columns of smoke rising beyond it.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a buon fresco on lime plaster, from the paper's reference portrait based on Funerali di sant'Agostino (Funeral of St Augustine, scene 17), from the Life of St Augustine (Benozzo Gozzoli, 1464-1465, apsidal chapel, Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano). View source artwork.

Monica and Augustine at Ostia · Part 2 · HIPPO REGIUS, Numidia, 28 August 430 AD

Saint Augustine dies at Hippo in the third month of the siege

Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius, died on 28 August 430 AD in the third month of the Vandal siege, aged seventy-five, with the bishops who had taken refuge in the city standing at his bed. He had preached until the fever took him, and spent his last days reading the penitential psalms copied out and hung on the wall beside him. The bishops who watched with him buried him the same day.

Edition of · 6 min read

Also in the edition of Thursday, 27 August 2026

feature · OSTIA, Roman Italy, autumn 387 AD

At an Ostia window, St. Monica has nothing left to want

This month at Ostia, waiting for a ship to Africa that had not come, Saint Monica and her son Saint Augustine stood at an upstairs window over the garden and talked about what the eternal life of the saints would be. She told him there that she had no pleasure left in anything in this life and did not know what she was still doing here. Five days later the fever took her, and the household that heard her at the window did not treat her death as an interruption.

4 min read

Monica and Augustine at Ostia · Part 1 · OSTIA, autumn 387 AD

'Nothing is far to God': an hour with Saint Monica at Ostia

Saint Monica, fifty-five, sat for an hour in the rented house at the Tiber mouth where her household is waiting for a ship to Africa. She answered questions on the closing sailing season, the wine she gave up as a girl, her husband's temper, the years she refused her son her table, and the bishop who told her the son of these tears could not perish. She has given up the grave she prepared for herself at Tagaste, beside her husband.

4 min read