Sections
Today's editionKids editionArchiveSaintsAbout RSS Search
Search

August 28 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

All Editions
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

St. Augustine died today with the bishops sheltering in the besieged city praying at his bed, and was buried before the day was out.

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.
St. Augustine on his deathbed in the bishop's house at Hippo Regius, with the bishops sheltering in the besieged city praying at his bed, 430 AD.
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.

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.

6 min read

An empty whitewashed room with a red and black tiled floor: a long plain wooden table holding wax tablets, a stylus, an open codex, an inkwell, two bowls of food, an earthenware jug, a cup and a silver spoon, with a chair behind it, a cushioned stool in front, a wicker basket on the floor, an unlit clay lamp on the wall and an arched doorway opening on a sunlit colonnade and the sea.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a buon fresco on lime plaster, from the paper's reference portrait based on St Augustine's Vision of St Jerome (scene 16, east wall), from the Life of St Augustine (Benozzo Gozzoli, 1464-1465, apsidal chapel, Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano). View source artwork.

interview · HIPPO REGIUS, Numidia, 28 August 430 AD

The man who watched St. Augustine die: St. Possidius on forty years

St. Possidius of Calama, Bishop of Calama and a refugee in St. Augustine's house since the Vandals took his city, sat down at the bishop's table a few hours after the burial. He describes the household's rule of life, the church plate melted down for captives, the sermon that lost its thread and converted a merchant, and the three months of blockade. He also gives the last ten days: the shut door, the penitential psalms copied out and hung on the wall, and the men standing at the bed.

4 min read

More in this edition

Today in the Church

Memorial of Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

On this day in the Church

  • 430 St. Augustine died at Hippo Regius in the third month of the Vandal siege, his body whole and his mind clear, while the bishops sheltering in the city stood at his bed and prayed.Our reportSource
  • 1986 Pope John Paul II gave the apostolic letter Augustinum Hipponensem at St Peter's for the sixteenth centenary of St. Augustine's conversion, calling him the common father of Christian Europe.Our reportSource
  • 2013 Pope Francis opened the General Chapter of the Order of Saint Augustine in the Roman basilica that holds St. Monica's relics, preaching on three restlessnesses in her son.Our reportSource

Quote of the day

“You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
— St. Augustine, Confessions I.1.1, St. Augustine, Confessions, Book I, trans. J. G. Pilkington (NPNF, 1887)