The Confessions of St. Augustine is a portrait of the inner world of Augustine of Hippo. The author was the bishop of Hippo in Roman Africa for 35 years, during the time of the decline of Roman civilization on that continent. Augustine is considered one of the important Fathers of the Church in the West, and he helped form Christian theology in the early history of the church. In his Confessions, Augustine shows the depth of his religious belief and writes extensively about his own inner turmoil about such events in his life as the time when he was a child and stole pears from a neighbors tree, a crime that haunted him for the rest of his life.
His Confessions is an important work detailing the inner life and of the religious man. It is also a book that links the sinner with redemption, for Augustine presents himself as a great sinner until the age of 32 when he is convinced of the truth of Christian teachings and changes his life. The book is thus part biography and part statement of philosophy.
Peter Brown notes the biographical element and the fact that the work is not an autobiography in the modern sense. However, he also finds that the autobiographical element in a work from the Late Roman era is what sets the book apart from the intellectual tradition to which Augustine belonged:
It is more important to realize that the Confessions is an autobiography in which the author has imposed a drastic, fully-conscious choice of what is significant. The Confessions are, quite succinctly, the story of Augustine's "heart," or his "feelings"--his affectus (Brown 169).
Robert J. O'Connell emphasizes the problem created for readers by the mixture of autobiography and philosophical discussion, especially in trying to reconcile the autobiographical portion of the book, covering Books I-IX, and the final four books. Augustine examines the present state of his soul in Book X. That examination begins, however, with a len...