With its rare combination of penetrating insights and meticulous scientific analysis, this revolutionary study provides completely new interpretations of the religious development of Saint Augustine. By combining textual evidence from Augustine's writings with certain precisely dated spectacles of astronomy, the author argues cogently for the perceptible influence of those celestial phenomena upon Augustine's early conversion to Manicheism, as well as his later disillusionment with it. Also, on the basis of a careful analysis of Augustine's many scriptural references, the famous conversion-scene of the Confessions is shown to be modeled upon the conversion of Saint Paul. Finally, the author argues that the Confessions itself is a most powerful testament to Augustine's final conversion to a completely arbitrary form of divine predestinarianism.