 Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430), philosopher and Father of the Church, devoted to music his treatise De Musica. Although mostly technical in character, the book is an early statement of the medieval view of music as first and foremost a science, rather than a practical occupation. Augustine defines music as “the science of mensurating well” (scientia bene modulandi—this last word is at times rendered as ‘modulation’), that is, the discipline concerned with the attainment of measure and proportion (De Musica, book I, 2).