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Augustine was a parent for eighteen years between the ages of seventeen and forty three.
In the year 371 at the age of seventeen years Augustine left home in Tagaste once again to study at Carthage.
He also he entered into a stable relationship with a woman whom he came to love dearly but whose name we do not know.
There he began a small school that taught grammar.
They moved back to Carthage in 376, where Augustine now felt confident enough to open a more formal school of rhetoric.
He persisted there for eight years, while Adeodatus approached adolescence.
In 383 the young family moved to Rome, to be reunited with some North African friends, including Alypius, his life-long friend. In 384 they moved to Milan. Monica joined them in Milan in 385.
She arranged for Augustine a marriage to a woman of an appropriate social class. Augustine reluctantly accepted the plan as a means to advance his career.
For Augustine, this meant he had to send away his faithful partner of fourteen years, who was the mother of Adeodatus.
This separation was emotionally wrenching for both of them. The woman went back to North Africa, and Adeodatus remained in Milan with his father and with Monica, his grandmother.
(Continued on the next page.)
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