A "Great Man" in History

Posted by Joseph Allen McCullough Jun 4, 2006

There has been a movement in Academic history circles over the last couple of decades to move away from the "Great Person" study of history and move towards a more social history. That it is to say it has become popular to study the common man of specific periods, to examine the medieval serf instead of the king, or to look at the life of the standard infantry man in the trenches rather than the strategies of their generals. This is all well and good. To fully understand history it is important to understand the lives of the majority of the people living in a given period of time.

However, this approach to history has one major drawback. It is, in many ways, boring. The truth is common people live common lives. That's not to say they are not valuable lives or bad lives, just not the kind of lives you want to read about in books or see in television specials. History is packed with extraordinary people who made huge impacts on the world for good and evil. It is the stories of these people that can entertain us and perhaps even teach us.

One such extraordinary person was St. Augustine of Kent. A man who lead a relatively simple life until the Pope commanded him to lead an expedition to the far corner of the world. Augustine is a very human character. Even in the small fragments of his story that we still possess we can see his triumphs and his failings. He showed fear, and perhaps a little arrogance, but he also showed courage and his actions would literary change the world.