Monica's formation (1).
Although there was much about the life of Monica that was heroic and saintly, there are other factors that have made scholars question her motives.
For example, why did she not persist with having Augustine baptised as a youngster, especially during his illness?
Did she lack charity when she helped to dismiss the concubine with whom Augustine had lived for over thirteen years?
Knowing more about the difficulties in Monica's own life may possibly influence the responses made to these questions.
The early family life experienced by Monica - and Augustine also, to a lesser extent - was more a product of Roman culture than of Christian formation.
It involved severity more than love. In the house of their parents, Monica and her sisters were taught by an aged slave woman how to be good wives.
As part of this preparation, when they ate their frugal meals they were forbidden to drink even water, however great their thirst.
This was done in the hope that in later life they would not be overcome by a love for stronger drink.
Apparently this discipline did not succeed in the case of Monica in her early life, because she later was accused of being a drinker of wine.
Augustine wrote of the upbringing of Monica simply and openly, and without critical comment.
She had grown up in a "believing household" as "a good limb of your church" [Confessions 9, 17].
Monica was raised a Catholic, although she had relatives caught up in the Donatist schism.
Augustine wrote that Monica was under the tutelage of an old female servant who was "vehement with a holy severity in administering correction," [Confessions 9, 8, 7].
She was brought up in modesty and "made obedient to her parents by You, Lord, rather than by them to You."
Furthermore, she had a strong will that was not always successfully controlled during her childhood, although it would be tempered within the violence of her marriage to the irascible Patricius.
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