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Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine’s Confessions

byKate Cooper

Kate Cooper recovers four women who appear in Augustine's Confessions but are remembered mainly through his spiritual autobiography: his mother Monica, his unnamed concubine, his fiancée, and the woman who influenced his conversion story. By placing them within late Roman family, law, slavery, religion, and domestic life, Cooper reconstructs choices and constraints Augustine left unexplored. The book asks how a foundational male text changes when its silent women become historical subjects. Their experiences illuminate intimacy, abandonment, ambition, and the human relationships beneath one of Christianity's most influential narratives.

Publisher

Basic Books

Publication date

2023

Format

Print edition

Pages

304

ISBN

9781541646018