A reading notebook on Augustine’s Confessionsthirteen books read slowly, with the people, places and passages you want to keep

Method

1. 1

   Choose a translation and a pace

   The translation by E. B. Pusey, published in 1838, is in the public domain and free to read online; its English is old (“Thou madest us for Thyself”) but faithful. Modern translations read more easily and are in copyright, so read them freely and quote them only briefly, in your own notes. Pick one to read and note it on the shelf.

   Thirteen books is a winter at two a fortnight. Plan four documents that follow the book’s own turns: Books I–IV (childhood, Carthage and the Manichees), Books V–IX (Rome, Milan, the garden and Ostia), Book X (memory) and Books XI–XIII (time, creation and Genesis).

2. 2

   Let your assistant build the scaffolding

   Connect the assistant you already use to know.sh; the support page has the steps. Then ask it to build the notebook: the shelf, the four documents, each with an overview outlining its books chapter by chapter, and a fifth document, People and places, with a finding for each person and city (Monnica, Patricius, Ambrose, Alypius, Nebridius, Adeodatus; Thagaste, Carthage, Rome, Milan, Ostia) saying which books they appear in.

   If your assistant can search the web, ask it for a finding on the timeline of Augustine’s life, each date with its source: born in Thagaste in 354, baptised by Ambrose in Milan at Easter 387, Monnica’s death at Ostia later that year, the Confessions written in the late 390s. Claude and ChatGPT can do this; many local set-ups cannot search the web.

3. 3

   Check the scaffolding in the editor

   An outline is only useful if it matches the book. Before you read each book, open its outline with Edit and check it against the text as you go: fix a misplaced event, cut a summary that says more than Augustine does, and drag findings into the order you meet them.

   Open every source on the timeline and read what it says before you keep the date. Where the scholars differ, as they do on exactly when the Confessions was finished, say so in the finding. Everything the assistant filed is marked in Revisions as an assistant’s change, so you can always see what you have checked and what you have not.

4. 4

   Keep the passages that stop you

   After each reading session, add a finding for each passage worth keeping. Title it with the book and a phrase, Book I — restless until it rests, and paste the passage from your translation, labelled with book and chapter. Keep it short; a sentence or two is enough to find your place again.

   Under the passage write three things: Where it sits (what has just happened), What I think, and What I still do not understand. Name the people in the first line, after a word or two: “Here Augustine remembers Monnica at Ostia.” The index learns names from finding titles and first lines, so that is how Monnica comes to lead to every passage about her.

5. 5

   Write the reflections yourself

   The reflection is the point of the notebook, and it is the part no assistant should write. Your assistant can help around it: ask it to link a passage to the earlier one it echoes, or to leave a proposed note, with Accept and Dismiss, naming the psalm Augustine is quoting. Check every reference it gives against the Bible you read.

   Where you meet one of the ideas that traditions still argue over, such as grace or original sin, write down what Augustine says and what you make of it, and take your questions to a pastor, priest or teacher of your own tradition. The notebook is a record of your reading, not a ruling.

6. 6

   Get through Books X to XIII

   The last four books lose many readers. Before you start each one, ask your assistant for a plain outline of it, chapter by chapter, as a finding titled Draft outline — by assistant, so you never mistake it for Augustine. Read the outline, then read Augustine, then correct the outline in the editor where it flattened him.

   Book XI is where the famous question lives: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know” (Pusey, XI, 14). It rewards being read twice. Mark the passages you return to as Key.

7. 7

   Quiz yourself on who is who

   By Book VI the names start to blur. Ask your assistant for a quiz on People and places: it writes five to ten questions with know.sh’s quiz tools, each citing the finding it came from, and you take it in know.sh or in the iOS app, which is in TestFlight beta. A score under 60 per cent brings the quiz back under Revisit in three days; 80 per cent or more, in three weeks.

   When you finish the book, open the index and read it through: every person and place, with the passages you kept. Themes such as memory or time are ordinary words the index leaves out; press ⌘K and Look up finds every passage that uses them.