Saint Alypius of Tagaste

Almost everything known of Alypius was written by somebody else. Agostino Trapè, writing for santiebeati.it, says the news of his life is found "almost entirely" in the works of Augustine, with whom he shared the errors of youth, the conversion and the work of the apostolate (translated here from the Italian). ⁶ The encyclopedia notes that he appears in none of the ancient catalogs of saints: Gregory XIII placed his name in the Roman Martyrology in 1584, "the evidence of his sanctity being sufficiently clear from the account of his life by St. Augustine." ¹

That account, in Book VI of the Confessions, is one of the warmest portraits of a friend in early Christian writing. Augustine calls him "that brother of my heart" in Book IX. ⁵ Trapè adds that Alypius was small of stature, and that the only writing of his to survive is his part in two of Augustine's early dialogues, Against the Academics and On Order. ⁶

Alypius was born in Augustine's town, Tagaste, "his parents being of the highest rank there, but he being younger than I." ³ Cattini puts his birth about 360. ⁶ He studied under Augustine first at Tagaste and then at Carthage, according to the Confessions; the encyclopedia says instead that he studied under Augustine at Milan. ¹³

At Carthage he was caught up in what Augustine calls "the madness of the Circensian games," the chariot races. ³ Augustine, who had fallen out with the young man's father, had no way to advise him. One day Alypius came into his lecture room while Augustine was explaining a passage and reached for a comparison with the circus, "imbued with a biting jibe at those whom that madness had enthralled." ³ Augustine says he meant nothing personal by it. Alypius took it to himself, and "what any other man would have made a ground of offense against me, this worthy young man took as a reason for being offended at himself, and for loving me more fervently." ³ He gave up the races, became Augustine's pupil again, and followed him into the Manichaean sect. ³

Augustine tells another Carthage story as a lesson Alypius would need later. Rehearsing a speech alone in the marketplace at noon, he picked up a hatchet a real thief had dropped while cutting lead from the silversmiths' shops, and was arrested with it in his hand. ³ An architect in charge of the public buildings recognized him and cleared him by finding the thief's house, where a young slave told everything. Augustine says the future judge of "numerous causes in Your Church" went away "better experienced and instructed." ³

He went ahead of Augustine to Rome to study law. ³ There some fellow students dragged him, protesting, into the amphitheater on a day of gladiatorial shows. He shut his eyes and told them he would be "absent while present." ³ At a great shout from the crowd he opened them, and, in Augustine's words, "directly he saw that blood, he therewith imbibed a sort of savageness." ³ He went back, and brought others. Augustine tells it without sparing him, and adds that God taught him in the end "not to repose confidence in himself" but in God, "but not till long after." ³

At Rome he sat as assessor to the Count of the Italian Treasury. ³ A powerful senator wanted something the law forbade; Alypius refused a bribe and ignored threats, "all men being astonished at so rare a spirit, which neither coveted the friendship nor feared the enmity of a man at once so powerful." ³ The one temptation that nearly moved him, Augustine says, was the chance to have books copied for himself at official rates, and he turned that down too. ³ He then went with Augustine to Milan, partly so as not to leave him. ³

At Milan Alypius argued Augustine out of marrying, saying that they could never then live together in the love of wisdom as they wanted to. ³ Augustine says that Alypius had lived "most continently" since his early youth, and that he himself was the one who nearly drew his friend toward marriage out of curiosity. ³

It was to Alypius and Augustine together that the African courtier Ponticianus came one day and told the story of Antony of Egypt. ⁴ Afterward Augustine seized Alypius, cried out at how the unlearned were taking heaven while they, with all their learning, stayed where they were, and fled into the garden of their lodging. ⁴ Alypius followed and sat where Augustine left him. ⁴ When Augustine came back with the book of the apostle, having heard a child's voice chanting "Take up and read," Alypius asked to see what he had read and looked further down the page than Augustine had: "Him that is weak in the faith, receive." ⁴ "He applied to himself," Augustine writes, and "without any restless delay he joined me." ⁴ The two of them went in and told Monica. ⁴

They spent the following months at the country house at Cassiciacum, where Alypius, "a catechumen like myself," joined in the dialogues Augustine was writing. ⁵⁶ They were baptized together with Augustine's son, Adeodatus, by Ambrose at Milan. ¹⁵ Augustine says Alypius had become "so brave a tamer of the body, as with unusual fortitude to tread the frozen soil of Italy with his naked feet." ⁵ Benedict XVI dates Augustine's baptism to the Easter Vigil of April 24, 387; Trapè gives April 25, 387. ⁶⁸

The next year Alypius went home to Africa and lived a common life with Augustine and their friends at Tagaste, and in 391 followed him to the monastery at Hippo, according to Trapè. ⁶ He then traveled to the Holy Land, where he met Saint Jerome. ¹⁶ After his return, about 394, he was made bishop of Tagaste, while Augustine was still a priest. ¹⁶ "Under his guidance," the encyclopedia says, "Tagaste reproduced the sanctity, learning, monastic exactness, and orthodoxy of Hippo." ¹

He was bishop for nearly forty years. ⁶ Trapè says Saint Melania the Younger spent seven years at Tagaste under his direction; Cattini says several. ⁶ At the conference of Catholic and Donatist bishops at Carthage in 411 he was one of the Catholic spokesmen, and he worked against the Pelagians alongside Augustine, at the Council of Milevis in 416 and on several journeys to Italy carrying Augustine's writings to the pope. ⁶ Augustine dedicated his reply to two Pelagian letters to Pope Boniface I, whom he had come to know through Alypius: "after my brother Alypius saw you even in bodily presence," he wrote, "the more assured was your friendship, the greater became in me the conviction of your holiness." ⁷

The last that is heard of him is in 428, when he sent Augustine, from Rome, a work of the Pelagian Julian of Eclanum and pressed him to answer it. ⁶ Trapè says it is presumed that he was at Hippo when Augustine died in 430, and that he died the same year; Cattini says the date remains uncertain. ⁶ The encyclopedia says only that "the exact date of his death is not known." ¹

None of the sources used here names Saint Alypius as the patron of anything, and this page does not supply a patronage. ¹²⁶ What the Martyrology gives him instead is a summary of a friendship: first Augustine's pupil, then his companion in conversion, his colleague in the pastoral ministry, a strenuous fellow soldier in the struggle against heresy, and at last a sharer in the glory of heaven (translated here from the Italian). ²

Saint Alypius's feast is August 15. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him that day, and the encyclopedia says "his festival is kept on 15 August." ¹² Trapè writes that he was entered in the Martyrology in 1584 on August 18. ⁶ The Canons Regular and the Augustinian order keep him with Saint Possidius on May 16, a joint cult that santiebeati says Clement X confirmed in 1672. ⁹

Augustine did not write his friend as a model. He gave him the chariot races, the amphitheater, the Manichees, and the day he opened his eyes in the amphitheater and could not look away. ³ He also gave him the judge no senator could buy, and the student who heard a joke at his own expense and loved the teacher more for it. ³

His conversion is told in a single verse, and it was not the verse that converted Augustine. He read on past where his friend had stopped and found the line that was meant for him: "Him that is weak in the faith, receive." ⁴

He spent forty years as a bishop in a small African town, through schism and controversy, and the date of his death was not kept. ¹⁶ Almost everything known of him comes from the friend he followed from Tagaste to Carthage, Rome, Milan and home again. ³⁶