Africa, the garden where the seed of the Word of God grew into a leafy tree, watered by the blood of the innumerable Christians who offered their lives for the sake of their love for God, was the great homeland of St. Augustine.
Thagaste, a small village in North Africa, today called Souk-Ahras, insignificant and unknown in the immense Roman Empire, had the honour of being the birthplace of the greatest genius of Christianity: Aurelius Augustine.
On November 13, 354 A.D., was the day when the Lord called to life Aurelius Augustine, who saw the light of the sun and later became one of the most renowned Fathers of the Church in the history of early Christianity. His mother was St. Monica, an example of a mother convinced of her faith and faithful to her commitments as wife and mother.
The parents of St. Augustine were: Patricius, a non-believing man, busy in his socio-political commitments and very prone to anger and domestic violence; and Monica, a noble woman, committed to the Christian faith, patient and humble, ready to work, from God, to win her husband and her son Augustine to Christ.
Aurelius Augustine had two brothers: Navigio, a noble man and Perpetua, a woman of strong commitment to her faith who, after the conversion of St. Augustine, became a member of one of the communities of nuns founded by St. Augustine, exercising the office of superior of the community.
Following the custom of the time, Aurelio Agustin was not baptized a few days after his birth; however, his mother St. Monica prepared him as a catechumen so that he could become familiar with the Christian doctrine.
Aurelius Augustine, although he was not baptised, was not far from the way of God, so that when he fell seriously ill, he himself asked to be baptised, the sacrament which gave him the right to rejoice with God for all eternity. But it was not granted to him as he soon recovered from his illness.
St. Augustine is a pedagogue renowned for developing the Philosophy of Affectivity in the work of educating people with human warmth: “Only affective knowledge of truth is perfect knowledge” (St. Augustine). In the West, St. Augustine is known by the titles of: The Eagle of Hippo, The Doctor of Grace, The Shepherd of Souls, The Tireless Seeker of Truth, The Man of the Restless Heart, The Man of the Anthropology of Interiority, among others.
The foundation of the Cervantinian-Augustinian Educational Project is the Catholic Faith, according to the guidelines of the Gospel and the charism of Saint Augustine. The Identity of Cervantinian-Augustinian Education is based on the Pedagogical Proposal of St. Augustine and on his in-depth philosophical and theological thought, with its open horizons to the different moments of history. St. Augustine is recognised as the developer of the Philosophy of Affectivity in the educational process: “Only affective knowledge of truth is perfect knowledge” (St. Augustine). The characteristic of the Cervantinian-Augustinian Education lies in carrying out the educational action as a friendly and affectionate encounter between teacher-pupil: ‘The good educator treats his/her pupils with the love of a brother, the love of a father and even the love of a mother’ (St. Augustine). St. Augustine’s “Pedagogia Amoris” is closely related to the philosophy and theology of history which, as pedagogy, is ordered to the formation of students. The Ideal of the Cervantinian-Augustinian Education is to educate people with an ordered heart, in harmony, peace and happiness, to be citizens oriented towards the ‘City of God’, in other words, towards the City of the Well-being, in every moment of history.
The Augustinian educational action is inspired by a coherent proposal in values and it is expressed in an experience of attitudes, in which students not only learn to think and to do, but also to be and to share. The main characteristics of Augustinian Education are:
