The Life Of Augustine And Joan Of Arc

Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my purpose? What happens when I die? These are four fundamental questions that everyone on earth have asked themselves and have tried to understand. One approach people try to understand these four questions is through religion. Religion gives us answers, and in addition a sense of hope. In the Middle Ages peoples’ lives were dominated by the Catholic Church. Whether you were a peasant or a noble your life would revolve around religion. One way we can see this is through the life of Augustine, and Joan of Arc. Religion played a key part in each of their lives, and we can see how people viewed religion back then. Today, religion does not play as big of a part of people’s lives as it did in the past. Overall, …show more content…
Does seeking God differ from what it was like in the Middle Ages? A great example of a man’s quest to find God is the life of Augustine. Augustine was born in 354 AD in North Africa, and is a story about a troubled man in a search to find himself and God. Augustine went through many struggles in his quest of finding God. His two major faults were his pride and his Lust. At a young age, Augustine turned to the Manicheism for his answers, and later to Neoplatonism, because he thought the Bible was too simple and he needed a more complex religion. He thought he was so smart, and that he could find all the answers himself, but later he discovers that he need faith, he needs God to discover the answers that he wants. Also, back then, a Christian would live in accordance to Christ. Even when Augustine is about to accept Christianity, he still struggles with the notion of giving up worldly pleasures, particularly sex. However, after fourteen years of struggling to find God, he has a conversion and becomes one of the greatest Christian thinkers. Also, around the time of Augustine, monasticism became very popular because Christianity was no longer illegal in the roman empire, and thus people could not give their life to their faith, and their God. So people wanted to express their faith, and they did that through monasticism. Monks dedicated themselves to God, and took three vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience. They separated themselves from the world, because the world held to many distractions like obligations, food, shelter, and an expectation to marry. There was also a fraction called desert monasticism that became popular at the time. These monks lived in a very harsh environment to prove their devotion to God and to others. Today, many people take different quests in order to find God then Augustine and people during the Middle