Terence Sweeney: Monica Contra Mundum: Augustinian Conversions to the Peaceful City

In my essay, I explore Augustine’s Confessions as a political text by considering his portrayal of Monica and three conversions: her own, her son’s, and her husband’s. In each, Augustine portrays conversion as a movement against the earthly city in the form of political peregrinations toward the pilgrim city. In Monica’s conversion, we see her move from the ‘suburbs of Babylon’ to the pilgrim city as she lets go of her ambitions for her son. This is expressed in her conversion regarding what the conversion of her son would mean. This allowed her to accept her son’s conversion from the political ambition to the integrated Christian life. These conversions connect to the troubling portrayal of domestic violence in Book 9. Recognizing the problematic portrayal of the ‘submissive wife’, I argue that Augustine, and more importantly Monica, subverts this submission. Through creative non-violence Monica brings about the conversion of her husband Patricius from relationship predicated on dominance, violence, lust, and ambition (the glories of Rome) to a relationship based on peace (Christianity). Augustine’s portrayal is a critique of Roman values and shows how Christian non-violence can ground a different kind of community. While insufficiently critical of domestic violence, Augustine does show how Christianity can convert people to peace through non-violence. Augustine’s ontology is activated by Monica and so provides ways to think about activism for peace within and against our own politics of dominance, violence, sexism, and ambition.