conversion · 386 · Milan
Ponticianus, a fellow African at court, came to visit and found a copy of Paul on the table, and told them about Antony of Egypt — whose Life this dataset holds under Athanasius — and about two officials at Trier who had picked the book up idly and given up their careers and their engagements before they put it down. Augustine went out into the garden of the house in a state he describes at length and could not decide. Then a child's voice from over the wall, in a game he did not recognise, saying take up and read; and he took up the codex and read the first thing his eye fell on, which was Romans 13, and did not need to read further. The sole witness is the eighth book of the Confessions, written about a decade afterwards and addressed to God rather than to a reader — a form that makes it the least corroborable and the most influential autobiography in the language at once. He was baptised the following Easter, which is the event next to this one.
Nothing, on his own account — he had been trying to will it for years and could not.
Everything downstream of the Confessions, which is most of Latin Christianity.