Confessions

Augustine of Hippo's autobiographical work, written in Latin in his early 40s, runs to 13 books composed to be read aloud, each a complete unit. The first nine cover his early life: boyhood, stealing pears from a neighbor's orchard at sixteen, the study of rhetoric at Carthage, his years following the Manichaean religion and his conversion to Christianity, in which Saint Ambrose played a part. The last four are commentary and far more philosophical. Written as prayers addressed to God, the text expresses deep regret for a sinful youth. Widely seen as among the first and most influential spiritual autobiographies in Western writing, it became a model for Christian authors through the Middle Ages.

Mark Manson called it the original memoir and credited it with shaping a thousand years of church theology and Western philosophy.