Nov 13: Augustine of Hippo Is Born and Yahballaha III Dies at Maragheh

Host 1 Welcome to This Day in Church History, on this day, November 13th, we are exploring two deeply influential figures from opposite ends of the earth whose legacies still shape the faith. Plus, a few quick historical notes for you.

Host 2 Yeah, it is a pretty fascinating deep dive today.

Host 1 I mean, imagine an East Asian monk dodging wars across the steppes only to end up bridging the Mongol Empire and the Pope.

Host 2 Right. But before we head east, we have to start in the collapsing Roman West.

Host 1 Yes. So we begin in 354 AD in Roman North Africa, specifically a town called Thagaste in modern day Algeria, where Aurelius Augustinus was born.

Host 2 And he grows up in this very divided household. His mother, Monica, is a devout Christian,

Host 1 while his father, Patricius, is a pagan, though he eventually converts on his deathbed.

Host 2 He does. And you know, that early tension sort of mirrors Augustine's own internal struggles later on. He studies rhetoric in Carthage, and gets drawn into all these intellectual currents.

Host 1 Right. He is searching for truth, but constantly shifting his philosophical allegiances. First, he is drawn to Manichaeism.

Host 2 Yeah. Which essentially viewed the world as this strict cosmic battleground between good light and evil matter.

Host 1 Okay. And then he shifts to Neoplatonism, seeking a single abstract source of all existence. It is highly relatable, honestly, like a modern seeker trying every philosophy before finding a true home.

Host 2 That is a great analogy. He was desperately trying to reconcile extreme intellectual logic with this deep spiritual void. He even has a son. Adiodatus, who tragically dies at 16.

Host 1 Oh, wow. That is heartbreaking.

Host 2 It was. But then we reach late August 386 in Milan. This is where we see the exact mechanism of his conversion.

Host 1 Right. The famous garden moment.

Host 2 Exactly. He hears a child's voice say, take up and read. He opens a passage from the Apostle Paul and everything finally clicks.

Host 1 Because Paul's writings offer him what abstract philosophy could not, a personal God who provides the grace to overcome the bodily temptations he just couldn't defeat by sheer willpower alone.

Host 2 So true. He's baptized by Ambrose of Milan at the Easter Vigil in 387 and by 395 he becomes Bishop of Hippo.

Host 1 And he serves there until his death in 430, right while the Vandals are besieging the city. Along their way, he writes masterpieces like The City of God and Confessions.

Host 2 Yeah, and Confessions opens with that famous prayer,

Host 1 You have made us for yourself, oh Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Host 3 Beautiful line. And looking at his legacy, there's a fascinating irony here. Augustine is honored universally by Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, and Anglicans, Augustinians actually celebrate their saints today.

Host 4 But there is some tension with how his work is read, right?

Host 3 Oh, definitely. Lutherans and Calvinists view him as a Reformation father based on his teachings on grace, though the Catholic Church strongly disputes that reading.

Host 4 Well, while Augustine's theology was shaping the crumbling Roman Empire, we have to look east to see how the church was surviving under a very different superpower.

Host 3 The Mongols.

Host 4 Exactly. That brings us to 1317 and the death of Marcos, later known as Yabalala III, Marcos was born around 1245 near modern Inner Mongolia.

Host 3 Though there is a disputed fact about his ethnicity. Older works call him Uygur, while the historian Pierre Giorgio Bourbon thinks he was Ungud Turkic.

Host 4 Interesting. Well, in 1275 or 76, he and his teacher Rabban Bar Sauma decide to walk to Jerusalem but a Mongo Mamluk war blocks the road so they never make it.

Host 3 Right but then in 1281 he is made Patriarch Yabalaha of the Church of the East.

Host 4 which is amazing because he knew very little Syriac and no Arabic. How does he get put in charge?

Host 3 It comes down to geopolitical survival. His knowledge of Mongol customs was a great asset. He survived imprisonment and was once even saved by a Khan's Christian mother.

Host 4 Wait, really? A Khan's Christian mother?

Host 3 Yeah. And he died in Maragha on November 13th, 1317.

Host 4 I have to push back a bit though. Were these Eastern outposts really connected to the West?

Host 3 They were. He advised sending Salma to Europe to meet kings and the pope and even sought union with Rome which his own bishops rejected.

Host 4 Isn't it fascinating to picture an East Asian monk negotiating with the pope?

Host 3 It proves 1200s Christianity was an Asian faith stretching from China to Mesopotamia kept alive at the edges of empires.

Host 4 Incredible. Well before we go a few quick historical notes for you. Also on this day in 867 AD Pope Nicholas I died.

Host 3 And in 1618 the Synod of Dort opened shaping the five points of Calvinism.

Host 4 Right and in 1938 Francis Xavier Cabrini was beatified.

Host 3 You know consider how vast the church's footprint truly was long before the modern era stretching from Augustine's North Africa to Yabalaha's Mongolia.

Host 4 Thanks for tuning in see you back here tomorrow.