Vol. I: The letters of St. Augustine, Volume I of III (Letters 1-82) - his early years as Christian and bishop: the friends of his conversion, Paulinus of Nola, the first letters to Jerome, and the earliest Donatist letters. NPNF translation. Across more than forty years - from the months after his conversion to the last days of his life - Augustine wrote letters, and in them the whole of his mind is at work at closer range than in the treatises: Augustine consoling, correcting, teaching, and thinking aloud. This is a collected edition of Augustine's correspondence: it gathers the letters preserved in the public-domain translations of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers - 161 letters in all - in the traditional order and numbering, and issues them in three volumes. Volume I holds the letters of his early years - the friends of his conversion, Paulinus of Nola, and the opening of his long correspondence with Jerome. Volume II holds the letters of his maturity, written as Rome fell to the Goths - his counsel to Proba on prayer and the great letters to Marcellinus and Volusianus. Volume III holds the letters of his last years - on grace and the correction of the erring, to Count Boniface and to the nuns of Hippo, and the long letter that carries the Rule of his monastery.