St. Alipius, Obsessed with Blood Sports

[c. 360–c. 429] FEAST DAY: August 15

Shows and spectacles were essential to Roman life. Under the Caesars, before Christianity dominated the empire, fully half the days of the year were public holidays celebrated with races, wild animal hunts, and gladiatorial combats. Every city in the empire had an arena, and Carthage, as the leading city in Roman North Africa, had one that was especially impressive. It was here that Alipius spent an inordinate amount of his time as a young man.

He was born in Thagaste, St. Augustine’s hometown, the son of a noble family. His parents sent him to the university in Carthage where Augustine was teaching. There, Alipius became one of Augustine’s students, and eventually a close friend. After growing up in a backwater such as Thagaste, Alipius was dazzled by Carthage. The one place in town that captivated him above all the rest was not Augustine’s lecture hall, but the arena. Alipius became addicted to what Augustine characterized in his Confessions as “the folly of the circus games.”

When a Roman referred to the circus he meant chariot races. The races drew fanatical crowds who lived and died by the success of their favorite teams, their favorite charioteers. Nor did the fans limit themselves to strenuous cheering: gambling was endemic at the races. It was not unusual for a man to bankrupt himself in a single day of betting. And if the thrill of the races and the excitement of placing daring wagers didn’t offer enough stimulation, there were plenty of prostitutes working the crowd.

Augustine thought it disgraceful that a young man as intellectually promising as Alipius should waste his time in such degrading company. One day in class, while explaining a philosophical point, Augustine saw an opportunity to illustrate his argument with an analogy to the races. Augustine recalled in his Confessions that he was “bitingly sarcastic” about people who were addicted to such vulgar entertainment. The words struck home. Alipius, Augustine tells us, “gave his mind a shaking, and all the filth of the circus games dropped away from him, and he stopped going to them.”

But Alipius’s conversion was short-lived. From Carthage he went to Rome to study law. One day after dinner he met some friends in the street. They were on their way to the amphitheater to see the gladiators. Alipius declined to join them, saying he was a changed man, that even if they dragged him to the amphitheater he would shut his eyes and think of something ennobling. “I shall be as one not there,” he said. To test Alipius’s resolve, his friends did indeed drag him to the amphitheater, seating him amidst a mob of frenzied spectators. True to his word, Alipius kept his eyes shut and forced his mind to think of something other than what was going on all around him. But a great roar from the crowd broke his concentration; out of curiosity, Alipius opened his eyes. One of the gladiators had fallen to the ground, wounded by his opponent. The sight of the fighter’s blood dripping into the sand, the deafening sound of the various factions in the stands calling for the death blow, or crying for mercy, or urging the fallen gladiator to get up and fight on, intoxicated Alipius. “His eyes were riveted,” Augustine says. “He imbibed madness.” Before he knew what he was doing Alipius was on his feet, screaming himself hoarse with the rest of the spectators.

Alipius’s old habit was nothing compared to his newly acquired taste for blood. He returned so often that the friends who had first taken him to the games got tired of going, so Alipius sought out other fans of the amphitheater and went with them. Soon he was coaxing other men, as innocent as he had once been, to come along to see the gladiators fight. Alipius’s bloodlust was all consuming, and this time there was nothing Augustine could say to dissuade his friend.

But where St. Augustine failed, St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, succeeded. In 384 Augustine moved to Milan to teach philosophy; Alipius, now a lawyer, went with him. In Carthage both men had joined the Manicheans, a sect whose members considered themselves a spiritual and intellectual elite. Manicheans believed in two gods or powers, one good, the other evil, who were locked in an eternal struggle for dominance over the universe. Few Catholic bishops at the time could impress Augustine and Alipius, but Ambrose had received a classical education, and he had a gift for oratory that attracted crowds to any church where he was scheduled to preach.

Drawn by Ambrose’s reputation for eloquence, Augustine began attending the bishop’s Masses. And where Augustine went, Alipius followed. Ambrose’s sermons fell on fertile ground. After a period of private instruction with the bishop, Augustine and Alipius—along with Augustine’s illegitimate son Adeodatus—were baptized by St. Ambrose on the night of the Easter Vigil, 387.

When Alipius renounced the Manichean heresy for the Catholic faith, he also gave up the amphitheater. Strengthened by the grace of the sacraments, he never went to the gladiatorial games again.

Baptism seems to have drawn Alipius and Augustine even closer, with careers that followed identical paths. They both entered the priesthood and returned home to North Africa, where Augustine was named bishop of Hippo and Alipius bishop of their hometown, Thagaste. For the rest of their lives they were close collaborators, defending the faith against the Manicheans, as well as the Donatist and Pelagian heresies. The two friends died within a few months of each other: Augustine in 430, and Alipius in or around 429.