The Tomb of Saint Augustine

Saint Augustine died at Hippo in North Africa on 28 August 430, as the Vandals besieged the city. According to tradition, when Catholic bishops were driven out of Africa by the Arian Vandals some decades later, they took his relics with them to Sardinia. In the early eighth century, with Sardinia threatened by Saracen raids, the Lombard king Liutprand ransomed the relics and brought them to his capital, Pavia, where he laid them in the church of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, “Saint Peter in the Golden Sky.”

In 1362 the Augustinian friars began a great marble shrine for them, the Arca di Sant’Agostino, carved by sculptors of the school of Giovanni di Balduccio. Its three tiers are crowded with some 150 figures: saints, virtues, apostles and scenes of Augustine’s life. At its centre the saint lies on his bier, surrounded by mourners. The relics themselves were rediscovered beneath the altar in 1695.

The same church holds the tomb of the philosopher Boethius, author of The Consolation of Philosophy. Dante mentions the church in the Paradiso.

Pope Benedict XVI, who wrote his first scholarly work on Augustine, came to pray at the tomb in 2007. He told the people of Pavia that he had come to “fulfill a debt of gratitude” to the saint.

Where

Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, Pavia, Italy

When to see it

Open daily; the ark stands in the presbytery behind the altar.

Map

Find it on OpenStreetMap

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Saint Augustine