City of God (Penguin Classics) Read online

  Symmachus’s part in the affair was to present a petition for the restoration of the altar, removed, as we have seen, in 382. As Prefect of the city of Rome and Pontifex Maximus, he stressed the necessity for prudence: no one knew the final secret explanation of Rome’s prosperity; it was therefore unwise not to preserve the institutions that had presided over her success: it was perilous to disown them for something new. He brought Rome herself forward to plead her cause: she is old; she has no desire to change her pieties; her religion has civilized the world, driven the Gauls from the Capitol and Hannibal from the city.

  St Ambrose, however, was a doughty opponent, as his domination of the Arian Empress Justina in 385–386 and of the Emperor Theodosius (with the imposition of a public penance in 390) was soon to show. His argument was that the valour and virtues of the Romans were sufficient explanation of their successes. Was it not foolish to pretend to believe that the Empire depended on some ‘power’ that one must imagine but could not see? To restrict the future through reverence for the past was to retard progress and civilization. Christianity had, moreover, a positive contribution to make: it held truth and salvation, while polytheism led to perdition and error.

  The Christian cause prevailed, and paganism was clearly and definitely, if not finally, defeated. Prudentius, the Christian poet, describes how the Senate in plenary session formally banished Jupiter and the other gods in favour of the Christian God. The senators, many of whom were known to be dissembling, yielded to mounting public approbation of Christianity and abandoned for monotheism the gods of their forefathers. They made haste to disown their ancient pride, submit to baptism, and pay reverence at the tombs of Christian martyrs.

  The ordinary people were not slow to show their satisfaction, and soon the temples were mouldering in desolation. Theodosius in his time was relentless in his enforcement of the edicts against polytheism throughout the Empire, and particularly those against sacrifice to the gods. Some indeed in their zeal, fearing that shrines that were merely empty might one day be restored, hastened to destroy the temples themselves – some of them splendid edifices. A few of them were converted to Christian use, the most famous of these being the Pantheon, the temple in Rome of all the gods, which to this day stands as it ever stood.

  The decrees of Theodosius, however, reached further even than destruction of the buildings. Sacrifice to idols and divination by inspection of entrails – the commonplaces of public life in Rome – were declared to be high treason and were to be punished by death. Even the most trivial trafficking in garlands and libations was suspected and became liable to fines and confiscation of property.

  The collapse of polytheism was in the end sudden, universal within the Empire, and practically absolute. Its absurdity as a religious system had long been accepted by the intelligent. Now the wholesale assault on buildings and institutions, with evident impunity and no retaliation from the ousted and enfeebled gods, delivered the masses from any feelings of fear or obligation. The dismemberment of the representation of the great god Serapis at Alexandria met with no revenge in either the death of a Christian or the refusal of the Nile to grant its annual and blessed inundation. Truly the gods had lost, and Christ had won.

  Augustine was by his very circumstances a close observer of this stupendous transformation. As he was torn between the loyalties he owed first to Symmachus and then to St Ambrose, so his feelings and thoughts were divided between sympathy for the Rome that was and the vision of a Christian future. Nevertheless his evident delight at the destruction of the pagan temples at Carthage by Jovius and Gaudentius, for example, and his approval, even, of punishment by death for pagan sacrificing, leave no doubt where his final loyalty lay. He was not unaware that the recent desertion en masse from an enervated polytheism meant that there were Christians, many Christians even, who had yielded to Christ for unworthy motives – to save their lives or canvass official support for their careers and ambitions – but for all that he felt an overflowing happiness, later perhaps to be tempered, in the visible victory of the Christians.

  It is hardly surprising, then, if Augustine’s distress at the sack of Rome in 410 was not only much less pronounced than that of St Jerome but was compensated for by a greater optimism. If the pagan historians Zosimus and Rutilius Namatianus, writing of the period, say not a word of the disaster – possibly because they did not find it an attractive topic – we can understand that Augustine’s fondness for a theme, about which he was sometimes teased, was prompted more by its wider significance, as marking a stage in the conflict between Christianity and paganism, than by any preoccupation with the material decline and fall of Rome. The theme was with him an old one even before the sack of Rome.

  The question was, however, raised for him directly by a Christian official in Africa, Marcellinus – to whom in fact the City of God is addressed – in a letter in the year 412. Marcellinus mentioned the view put forward by some of his friends that the miracles wrought by Apollonius and Apuleius were greater than those of Christianity. He asked how, if God had been satisfied with the type of sacrifice described in the Old Testament, He could, without changing (which in God is impossible), be dissatisfied with it in the New? Finally there arose the problem of why it was that the Empire appeared to decline when it came to be governed by princes that had forsaken the old, tried religion and embraced a new one that inculcated precepts of tolerating offences and submitting to injury. This did not seem to go well with the interests of the Empire.

  One should note carefully that, although this letter was written about two years after the sack of Rome, and purported to give the views and complaints of pagans, there is not one word about the event in question, but rather the whole emphasis is on miracles, sacrifices and religion, as causes or explanations of success in Empire or failure.

  Augustine replied in a letter to a friend of Marcellinus and in a further one to Marcellinus himself. The themes of these two letters (Letters 137 and 138) foreshadow very clearly themes of the City of God, and some of them must be briefly mentioned: the Saviour came when the time was ripe for his coming; that coming was foretold not only by the prophets but also by secular philosophers and poets; the true mediator delivered man from the false mediators – the demons; Christ superseded Moses, who was greater than any pagan; the truth of Christianity is seen in its fulfilment of prophecy and its confirmation by miracles; the world is declining and is in its last age; Christians are multiplying everywhere and await the eternal happiness of the heavenly city (Letter 137).

  Letter 138 concentrates more on the question of religion and Empire: the gods of polytheism, being by definition many, were discordant and inimical to concord, which was the constituting element of the (Roman) State; this discord issued in civil wars; the gods favour the evils that corrupt man; Christianity, on the contrary, makes men better as soldiers, better as parents, better as children, better as masters, better as slaves, better as princes, better as judges, better as taxpayers and better as tax-gatherers. In short, Christianity was the great salvation for the State; it goes, however, beyond this life below and the harmony of the State, and provides entry to eternal salvation and the heavenly and divine republic of a certain eternal people. The splendid success of the Romans, achieved without the true religion, is perfected in their becoming citizens of another city. The letter goes on to insist that the pagan gods are less powerful than even Apollonius (of Tyana, 4th c. B.C.) or Apuleius (of Madauros, fl. c. 155 A.D.); the demons caused damage to the State and aroused hostility to Christianity; prosperity with the worship of the true God was seen in the temporal history of the Hebrews, whose dispersal, even as enemies of Christianity, aided its spread; the miracles of Christianity are incomparably superior to any others.

  Augustine ends this second letter by admitting that he has not managed to treat of all the points that he would wish. If Marcellinus writes for more, he will make it his business to reply either in a letter or in a book.

  In the event he wrote a book for Marcel
linus. It was the City of God, and it deals with essentially the same topics and with the same attitudes.2

  Anticipations of the Theme in Augustine

  Of the last stages in the conflict between polytheism and Christian monotheism, Augustine could not but have been conscious, at least from the time of his being recommended by Symmachus to Milan, where he encountered St Ambrose. His conversion in 386 represented in his own regard a victory for Christianity. It would not be surprising, then, if in the earliest compositions of Augustine there were adumbrations and preliminary formulations of what was later the dominating theme of the City of God. Here we shall confine ourselves to a few examples from his first extant works, which reflect very strongly his own personal experiences at the time of his conversion. Our purpose is to show how the main theme of the City of God – salvation, attained by the worship of the one true God and the rejection of all false gods – had already taken on a special significance for him as he reflected upon the pattern of his own life. Even at that stage he had begun to think that what was true for him was true for mankind at large.

  Whereas salvation in the City of God is represented by citizenship in a city (ciuitas) – an image explicitly taken from the Scriptures – it is in the earliest formulations represented as arriving in harbour (portus), or at the fatherland (patria), or being on the way (uia). These images are, of course, borrowed from the stock in trade of philosophy, particularly Platonic philosophy, in its eschatological aspects. Other variants used by Augustine at this time are the ‘land of desire’, the ‘land of happiness’, the ‘happy land’ and the ‘shining home’.

  The first few pages of Augustine’s first extant work, the Contra Academicos (Against the Academics), written after his conversion in 386, speak of the ‘harbour’ of wisdom, to which Providence, making use of misfortune, brings us. Special emphasis is laid upon the irrelevance and instability of temporal prosperity. Here Augustine alludes directly not only to the apparent misfortunes of the friend to whom the book is addressed, but to his own: prosperity had almost entrapped him, but he had been compelled by illness to give up his profession and betake himself to philosophy, which, as the work makes clear, means philosophy subject to the authority of Christ. One can suppose that Augustine’s views, on the irrelevance of prosperity and the use made by Providence of misfortune, might be applied by him to the Empire as much as to mankind in general or himself and his friend.

  The image of the harbour is used again in the first five sections of the De Beata Vita (On Happiness), composed at the same time as the previous work. The major image here, however, is the ‘land of desire’. There are two ‘ways’ to this land, both across a sea. One is the way of reason, which, possible only for the few, brings men to the harbour of philosophy, which is the harbour of the land of desire. The other way is the way of Providence which uses the storms of adversity to bring men, resist and wander in ignorance and folly as they may, to the same harbour. Those who are apparently most successful in life have need of the greatest storms. Some are brought to sanity, however, by the reading of books written by the learned and the wise. And some make their way to the ‘fatherland’ partly by their own use of reason, and partly by providential adversity.

  One great hazard threatens all who approach the harbour – a high mountain in front of the harbour itself. It is so enticing that it lures to it not only those approaching the harbour, but even some that have already been in the harbour. The people living on this mountain are full of conceit, and fear that others might share their glory; hence they impress on those approaching the difficulty, because of submerged rocks, of joining them and are happy to advise them how they can get to the land of desire. In this way they are themselves destroyed within sight of the ‘shining home’.

  Finally – a most important point – the harbour is wide, and one may still fail to put ashore and so not achieve one’s goal.

  There are significant anticipations of the City of God here. The term ‘citizen’ is used, and the phrase ‘on pilgrimage from their fatherland’ is one characteristically applied in the later work to the citizens of the heavenly city in their life on earth. The illusions of prosperity and the transcendent role of Providence in its use of adversity are here fully emphasized. Of particular significance, however, is the special mention of the envious and the proud, who help others to safety, but are themselves destroyed within sight of the fatherland. This, of course, must refer especially to certain Neoplatonists, who approached Christianity, helped others to become Christians, but rejected Christianity themselves. It is to be noted that not all mankind reaches the harbour, and those who are there may still be lost: so too might Christians fail to persevere.

  What is of special interest for us here is Augustine’s explicit relation of this theme and image to the circumstances of his own life at the time. Here indeed he gives a summary autobiography, parallel to that given in the Contra Academicos (Bk II, 4f.), and later to be expanded in the Confessions. It is clear that the theme, as set out in the De Beata Vita, is inspired by his own life: the providential use of illness, the effect of reading certain books (a very precise detail that he repeats and applies without hesitation to other men), his own part use of reason and part guidance by Providence, the illusions of prosperity, and the help of the proud Neoplatonists, who did not benefit from their own wisdom.

  In short we have here the opportunity of seeing how the theme of the City of God is constructed from the details of his own conversion. To put it another way, the City of God is the application of the Confessions to the history of mankind. The inspiration of Augustine’s themes is in his life.

  The image of the way is found first in Augustine in, again, the Contra Academicos (Bk III, 34). Here we are given the story of two men travelling to the same destination, one of whom has too much and the other too little credulity. At a crossroads they meet a humble shepherd whose directions the one accepts without question and proceeds to follow. The other ridicules such credulity and does not move. By the time an elegant gentleman comes along on horseback he is finding his waiting tedious, and accordingly acts upon the directions given by the elegant gentleman, although he does not accept them as necessarily true and they conflict with those given by the shepherd. In the event he gets lost in the woods and trackless mountains – for the elegant gentleman was an impostor. Meanwhile his companion is resting at his destination.

  The source of this image may have been epistemological, but Augustine explicitly refers its use here to the deeds and behaviour of men. Philosophers and those interested in religion had done so before him, and amongst those was one especially well known to him, Porphyry. Porphyry’s search for a universal way to salvation, and his rejection of Christ as that way, is the high point of the tenth book of the City of God and, perhaps, of the work as a whole. Although Augustine’s use of the image of the way is undoubtedly at a later stage influenced by Moses’ leading the Children of Israel to the Promised Land and by the description of the Magi’s return by another way into their own country, his treatment of it in the Confessions (Bk VII, 26f.) and the De Trinitate (On the Trinity) (Bk IV, 13ff.) is basically the same as here in the Contra Academicos and later in the City of God (Bk X, 32): the contrasting attitudes of the proud and the humble – the simple and credulous on the one hand, and the pretentious impostor on the other. The Confessions (Bk VII, 26f.) marks the point well:

  I should be able to see and understand the difference between presumption and confession, between those who see the goal that they must reach, but cannot see the road by which they are to reach it, and those who see the road to that blessed country which is meant to be no mere vision but our home… It is one thing to descry the land of peace from a wooded hilltop and, unable to find the way to it, struggle on through trackless wastes where traitors and runaways, captained by their prince… lie in wait to attack. It is another thing to follow the high road to that land of peace. (Translation by R. S. Pine-Coffin, Penguin Classics.)

  Unlike those in the i
mage of the harbour in the De Beata Vita, the Neoplatonists are here represented as seeking direction but being deceived. Both images complete the treatment of them in the City of God. The clearest and fullest anticipation is to be found in the De Vera Religions (On True Religion) (cf. 48ff.) which was begun at the same time as the works we have been discussing, but was not finished until four years later, in 390. Inasmuch as the City of God is a discussion of religion, both works share the same topic. The De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae (On the Ways of the Catholic Church), written in 388–390, has this striking passage on the ‘way’, which is, at the same time, a summary statement of one aspect and much of the contents of the City of God:

  the way which God built for us in the segregation of the Patriarchs, the bond of the Law, the foretelling of the Prophets, the sacrament of the Man assumed, the testimony of the Apostles, the blood of the martyrs and the entering into possession of the gentiles: let us heed the oracles (of Scripture) and submit our puny reasonings to divine inspiration (I. 11f.).