Pope Leo XIV is the first member of the Order of St. Augustine (OSA) to serve as pope. This Order follows the short “Rule of St. Augustine” written by St. Augustine about 400 A.D.[i] Augustinian friars live in community. Upon his election, Pope Leo announced that he would continue to live in community as pope with four friars, including his Peruvian secretary, Father Edgard Rimaycuna, in a 10-room suite in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.[ii] (My research does not show that the renovations have yet been completed; pope and friars have not yet moved in.)

In 2013 I formed a group of parishioners in northern Virginia to read St. Augustine, and I have formed another such group in Charlottesville. I am currently reading and discussing St. Augustine’s autobiography, the Confessions, for the third time since 2013. He wrote the book at age 43 in 397, the year after he became bishop. It covers his birth in 354 through his baptism in 387 at age 32. The word “confessions” is not limited to the description of his sins, his wayward life, bewailing that it had taken him so long to find God, but also includes his profession of Faith and his praise of God.

In a recent meeting, we spent some time discussing a paragraph he wrote about friendship:

All kinds of things rejoiced in my soul in their [my friends’] company—to talk and laugh and do each other kindnesses; read pleasant books together, pass from lightest jesting to talk of the deepest things and back again; differ without rancour, as a man might differ with himself, and when most rarely dissension arose find our normal agreement all the sweeter for it; teach each other or learn from each other; be impatient for the return of the absent, and welcome them with joy on their homecoming; these and such like things, proceeding from our hearts as we gave affection and received it back, and shown by face, by voice, by the eyes, and a thousand other pleasing ways, kindled a flame which fused our very souls and of many made us one.[iii]

Here is one example of a topic he discussed with friends:

…I said to my friends, “Do we love anything save what is beautiful? What then is beautiful? And what is beauty? What is it that allures us and delights us in the things we love? Unless there were grace and beauty in them they could not possibly draw us to them.”[iv]

Augustine spoke with his friends on many serious issues — all the ones he discusses in his Confessions, including astrology, Manichaeism, neo-Platonism, the two natures of Christ, theatre, the problem of evil, free will, the existence of non-corporeal beings, and on and on.

Who were these friends of Augustine?

One close friend St. Augustine does not name. When Augustine was age 19 or 20, he was reunited with a man about his own age with whom he had played when they were boys. For one year, they were very close. When the friend died, Augustine was grief-stricken and wrote over six pages about this friend, friendship, and his grief.[v]

Some friends are named and discussed in the Confessions. These, and others, also appear in letters they wrote to, or received from, St. Augustine, or in letters to third parties — so many of which have survived these 16 centuries.[vi] Among those friends he knew only through correspondence were the biblical scholar St. Jerome (c.347-420)[vii] and St. Paulinus of Nola (355-431).[viii] There are a number of friends with whom Augustine lived in community whom I will address in a moment, but there are at least the following two whom he knew in person but with whom he did not live in community.

Aurelius

Augustine met Aurelius in Carthage in 388. Aurelius was a deacon at the time and became bishop of Carthage in 391 or 392. Augustine dedicated De Trinitate (“On the Trinity”), written between 400 and 417 (perhaps as late as 428) and De opere monachorum (“On the Work of Monks”), written circa 400, to him.[ix]

Marcellinus[x]

Augustine had been bishop for a number of years when he met Flavius Marcellinus in 411. That year, Marcellinus, an imperial commissioner, was sent to Africa to preside over the Council of Carthage on the dispute between Donatists and Catholics. Based on allegations of corruption, Marcellinus was executed in 413, but he was exonerated the following year.

The friendship between Augustine and Marcellinus extended to matters of sacred doctrine, so much so that, while their friendship was very short, Augustine dedicated to Marcellinus two of his writings: De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum (“On the Merits and Remission of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants”) written in 412, and De civitate Dei (“The City of God”), written between 411 and 413. Indeed, in the opening of the latter he acknowledged that he composed the work because “my dearest son”  Marcellinus had suggested it.

Marcellinus was canonized as a martyr. There is a statue of him on the spire on the south transept of the Duomo di Milano and in Bernini’s colonnade in St. Peter’s Square.

The Communities in Three Locales

Now let’s turn to the friends with whom Augustine lived in community by first describing the communities. They were active consecutively in three different locales.

Community at Cassiciacum:

The first locale was at a villa in Cassiciacum (now called Casciago), 20 miles north of Milan. This was from November 386 to the Easter Vigil April 387 as Augustine awaited baptism. Possidius, who later lived in community with Augustine and wrote a biography of him not long after his death,[xi] described this community of ten:

The group at Cassiciacum was small and most intimate, consisting of [Augustine’s mother] Monica, who not infrequently took part in the debate, Adeodatus [Augustine’s son born in 373 to his unnamed concubine], [his brother] Navigius, Alypius, …two cousins Lastidianus and Rusticus…, and two pupils, Trygetius and Licentius, a son of his former patron Romanianus. They spent the time studying and discussing questions of religion and philosophy.[xii]

While he was living in community, he wrote. Whatever he wrote he would discuss with his friends before and during the writing. At Cassiciacum he wrote:

• Contra academicos (Against the Academics)
• De beata vita (On the Happy Life)
• De ordine (On Order)
• Soliloquia (The Soliloquies)
• De immortalitate animae (On the Immorality of the Soul)[xiii]

Community at Thagaste

Augustine joined with Adeodatus, Alypius, and others to found a lay community and chose to do so in Thagaste, his hometown and the hometown of some of the others. (It is now Souk-Ahras, Algeria.) Augustine writes:

We kept together, meaning to live together in our devout purpose. We thought deeply as to the place in which we might serve You most usefully. As a result we started back for Africa [specifically Thagaste].[xiv]

They were awaiting a ship when this plan was interrupted and postponed by a year due to the sudden death of Monica. In 388 they executed their plan and arrived in Thagaste. So, then, this was the second locale in which Augustine lived in community. This group of ten consisted of Adeodatus, Alypius, and Possidius, whom I named earlier, plus some faces new to us: Evodius, Severus, Profuturus, Urbanus, Bonifacius, and Peregrinus.[xv] Possidius observed the following about this community:

Having laid aside all worldly cares, he [Augustine] lived there with his disciples for nearly three years, in fasting, prayer and good works; meditating day and night the law of the Lord and living entirely for God. He instructed the present, and the absent by word and writing, according to the light he received from God.[xvi]

While living in community in Thagaste, he wrote:

• De musica (On Music)
• De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum (On the Catholic and the Manichaean Ways of Life)
• De grammatica (On Grammar) (lost before his death)
• De dialectica (On Dialectic)
• De animae quantitate (On the Greatness of the Soul)
• De diversis quaestionibus (On Eighty-Three Various Questions) (beginning)
• De libero arbitrio voluntatis (On Free Choice of the Will) (beginning)
• De Genesi adversus Manichaeos (On Genesis, Against the Manichees)
• De magistro (On the Teacher)
• De vera religione (On True Religion)

In Part 2 of this essay, I will continue with the community in Hippo and the men in that community.

[i] Roots of Augustinian Spirituality — Midwest Augustinians.

[ii] Greg Wehner and Emma Bussey, “Pope Leo opts to share papal residence with four associates, breaking with tradition,” N.Y. Post, Aug. 21, 2025, Pope Leo opts to share papal residence with four associates, breaking with tradition | New York Post

[iii] Book Four, ch. VIII.32; F.J. Sheed, trans., 1942.

[iv] Book Four, ch. XIII.20; F.J. Sheed, trans., 1942.

[v] Book Four, ch. IV to X.

[vi] There are some 300 letters to or from St. Augustine; about 50 of them are to him. AUGNET : 2153 Letters

[vii] AUGNET : 1416 Jerome

[viii] AUGNET : 1418 Paulinus of Nola

[ix] Unnumbered letter in James Houston Baker, trans., St. Augustine: Select Letters (1930), p. 40, L 239 St. Augustine Select Letters : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[x] For more on St. Marcellinus, see letters to and from Marcellinus in James J. O’Donnell, “A Discreet Epistle: Augustine’s Epistula 151,” Augustinus, epistula 151; CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Flavius Marcellinus; and Marcellinus of Carthage – Wikipedia.

[xi] Life of Augustine, composed between 432 and 439, that is, at least two years after Augustine’s death in 432. Herbert T. Weiskotten, trans., Introduction to Possidius, Life of Augustine, p. 21 (1919). Possidius, Life of St. Augustine (1919) pp.1-37.  Translator’s Introduction.

[xii] Weiskotten, Introduction to Possidius, Life of Augustine, p. 10 (1919). Possidius, Life of St. Augustine (1919) pp.1-37.  Translator’s Introduction.

[xiii] See list THE WORKS OF AUGUSTINE (I)

[xiv] Book Nine, ch. VIII.17.

[xv] AUGNET : 1201 Thagaste community

[xvi]  Weiskotten, trans., Possidius, Life of Augustine, ch. 3 (1919). Possidius, Life of St. Augustine (1919) pp.39-145.