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In Milan Alypius was drawn in by the public spectacles that featured gladiators, although this was against his better judgment.
He was mistakenly accused of crime he did not commit, and was supported by a witness to his good character, and the matter was halted.
Alypius earned his reputation for integrity as a junior lawyer by resisting the bribes and threats of a powerful senator.
He was more than an observer at the famous "tolle lege" garden incident in Milan, at which Augustine made his formal decision to seek the Christian faith.
As told by Augustine in the Confessions, after he read Romans 13:13 from the Epistles of Paul, Alypius took the manuscript from him, and read on further himself to the sentence that advised the weak in faith to accept Christ.
That sentence led Alypius immediately to make a similar conversion decision.
Alypius spent the summer months of 386/387 as part of ad hoc lay community established by Augustine at Cassiciacum in the hills outside of Milan. Both men were then on Easter Sunday 387 baptised together in Milan by the bishop, Ambrose.
In August 387 Alypius was in the company of Augustine, Monica, Adeodatus (the son of Augustine), Navigius (the brother of Augustine) and Evodius (a North African companion) when they travelled to the port of Ostia with the intention of sailing back to North Africa to establish a lay community at Thagaste.
Some time before Augustine became a bishop at Hippo in his own right in the year 396, Alypius was made bishop of Tagaste.
He remained there until his death in about the year 430. Some scholars estimate that he died a month before Augustine did.
Years after his conversion, Augustine described Alypius quite simply as "the brother of my heart," and in a letter to the scholar of the Bible, Saint Jerome, written in 394 or 395, he stated that "anyone who knows us both would say that he [Alypius] and I are distinct individuals in body only, not in mind; I mean in our harmony, trust, and friendship."
Alypius travelled to Bethlehem twice (probably in the years 395 and 397) and became acquainted with Saint Jerome, with whom Augustine had written communication only.
Alypius and Nebridius most probably were the two closest friends that Augustine had throughout most of his life.
Although always considered a saint by the Order of Saint Augustine, Alypius was only officially confirmed as a saint of the Church by Pope Clement X on 19th August 1672.
On that day the Pope issued a document named Alias a Congragatione, which officially declared Possidius, a companion of both Augustine and Alypius, as a saint.
ID2277
Compiled mainly from the Augustinian Missal, English language edition, 1979.
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