St. Augustine on the Walls  -- THIS SITE HAS BEEN MOVED, PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR NEW ADDRESS

In his Confessions, St. Augustine (354-430) writes that "our hearts are restless until they rest in you, Oh Lord" (1.1.1), and he uses the story of his own life and his own restless search for meaning as a way to unfold his philosophical and theological ideas. This website gives a brief summary of St. Augustine's life, with illustrations of some of the events he describes in Confessions. All of the images were painted by Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497), a well-known Renaissance artist (they have one of his pictures in the Philadelphia art museum).  Gozzoli lived 1000 years after Augustine, so his vision is based on his own reading of Confessions. The pictures are frescoes (painted directly on the walls) in the Church of St. Augustine, in San Gimignano, one of the most beautiful towns in Italy. It is often called the "city of towers;"  wealthy families apparently engaged in a medieval status race, to see who could build the highest tower.  Originally there were 72 towers, today only 15 are left. The church is very much alive today, and the Augustinian monks there offer regular services in Italian and English.          Begin your tour of the frescoes

Go to specific scenes:

Images are taken from: The Web Gallery of Art.  Quotations from St. Augustine's Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding, O.S.B., (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press) 1997. In a few cases, we have substituted more familiar translations for Boulding's words. Author: John Immerwahr, Update: March 22, 2008.  This website was inspired by a tour of the frescoes given by Rev. Brian Lowry, O.S.A., one of the Augustinian fathers of San Gimignano.