Nebridius

Nebridius (d. c. 391) was one of Augustine's closest friends — a young North African intellectual who shared Augustine's philosophical passions and his restless search for truth. He appears in the Confessions as a member of the circle of friends who studied Manichaeism and Neoplatonism with Augustine in Carthage and Milan, and he died young, apparently shortly after converting to Christianity. All 16 of his appearances in this collection are as the recipient of Augustine's letters, and they are some of the most appealing documents in the entire corpus. These are letters between two young men who are genuinely excited by ideas — writing about the nature of memory, the problem of perception, the relationship between the soul and the body, with an enthusiasm that is infectious across sixteen centuries. Augustine addresses Nebridius as an intellectual equal and sometimes as a gentle critic who can catch his errors. Nebridius matters because the letters to him show us a side of Augustine that the later theological treatises mostly hide: the young philosopher, still genuinely uncertain, still open to being persuaded, writing to a friend he loves with a warmth that is palpable. They are among the earliest documents of what we would now call the examined life, and they remind us that the towering Bishop of Hippo was once just a brilliant young man with a brilliant young friend.