ABSTRACT
St Augustine brought himself to embrace a life of chastity and resigned his post to retire with his mother, his son, his dose friend Alypius and other friends to a country estate near Milan lent them by a friend, at Cassiciacum. Augustine received the same education his pagan fellows would have; they shared the same language, the same secular culture, and the same horizons of knowledge. The relationship between Christianity and secular culture had long been problematic, but by the middle of the fourth century an easy coexistence had come into being. Although there are frequent references in his sermons and other works to the error of the Jews, there was in effect no real controversy between Christians and Jews at this time. Pelagianism came to occupy more of Augustine's attention, and the controversy with its representatives, more of his energies. Augustine discovered a form of Christianity interpreted in Neoplatonic terms.
