ABSTRACT
Augustine lived, almost emblematically, the intellectual and spiritual experiences offered by the urban civilisation of the Imperial period. At Hippo, Augustine had already been ordained as a priest by will of Bishop Valerius and by acclamation of the faithful. The political triumph of Christianity marked the success of the 'dissident' monotheism of Israel, in the heretical variant of the Christian doctrine, which overcame, through the decisive activity of Paul the Apostle, the indissoluble link between divine revelation and the history of the chosen people. In Latin Christian thought – which already at the end of the first century was enriching itself through contemporary Platonism, and subsequently through the crucial contributions of Plotinus' spiritualism, translated into Latin by Gaius Marius Victorinus – it is possible to identify clearly two intellectual currents: they are found either alternating or inextricably linked in Augustine's works.
