In Queens of a Fallen World, historian Kate Cooper (Band of Angels) reveals the enigmatic women who helped shape the world and worldview of the author of Confessions. Before he was St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, he was simply Augustine, son of Monnica of Thagaste, in northern Africa. Augustine was "a man who noticed women" as he grew into early adulthood; he memorialized them in his autobiography Confessions for the things they said and lessons they taught. Cooper introduces readers to these four women, who she believes contributed to Augustine's legacy as one of Latin Christianity's most exceptional thinkers: Empress Justina, who tested the limits of her power against male ecclesiastical authorities; his mother, Monnica, who shared childhood stories carrying heavy doses of moral reasoning; a 10-year-old heiress, whom Cooper calls Tacita, or "the silent one," arranged to marry Augustine; and, finally, Augustine's lover of a decade, whom Cooper calls Una (or "one"), the love of his life.
Relying on the Confessions as the primary source material, Cooper admits that Augustine "looms large, and seeing past him requires effort," which she does through well-researched reconstructions of the turbulent fourth-century class and cultural dynamics that circumscribed female agency. A gift of scholarship is Cooper's historical resurrection of Monnica, the formidable Christian mother who Augustine often used as an "alter ego" in his early philosophical dialogues. Queens of a Fallen World reads between the lines of Augustine's famous autobiography to illuminate four women who all left an indelible mark upon the man. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver