Augustine writes The City of God, 412–427

Augustine writes The City of God

When pagans blamed the Visigothic sack of Rome in 410 on the abandonment of the old gods, Augustine, bishop of Hippo, answered with The City of God, a work in twenty-two books written over some thirteen years. Against the pagan charge he set a view of all history as the story of two cities — the earthly and the heavenly.

Date

between 412 and 413 – between 426 and 427exact date unknown: an interval is given · duration: ≈ 14 years

Place

Hippo Regiustoday: Annaba, Algeria · Africa

Participants

Augustine of Hippo

Threads

Africa (1st–5th c.)

Also known as

The City of God; De civitate Dei; De civitate Dei contra paganos; City of God; О граде Божием; О граде Божьем

Alaric’s Visigoths sacked Rome in August 410. Refugees from Italy reached Africa, and many Romans held that the disaster was the punishment for forsaking the gods who had protected the city; Augustine wrote both to answer the pagans and to console the Christians. He began the work in 412 or 413 and dedicated its first three books, in 413, to his friend Marcellinus, the imperial tribune who had presided over the Conference of Carthage against the Donatists in 411; Marcellinus was executed later in 413. The work grew to twenty-two books and was completed in 426 (or 427).

The first ten books refute pagan religion and philosophy and argue that Christianity was not to blame for Rome’s misfortunes. The last twelve tell the origin, course and destined ends of the two cities: “Two loves have made two cities: love of self, even to the contempt of God, the earthly; love of God, even to the contempt of self, the heavenly” (XIV, 28). The true concern of Christians, Augustine argued, is not the earthly city, whose empires rise and fall, but the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem.

Augustine finished the book at Hippo; he died there in August 430, while the Vandals were besieging the city. The City of God was read throughout the Middle Ages — Charlemagne, his biographer Einhard reports, liked to have it read to him at meals.

Connections

Causes and preconditions

Sack of Rome by the Visigoths24–27 August 410 · Western and Central EuropeAugustine wrote the book to answer pagans who blamed the sack of Rome on Christianity

Related events

Donatist schismbetween 311 and 312 – 411 · Africathe first books were dedicated to Marcellinus, who had presided over the Conference of Carthage of 411 that condemned the Donatists

Augustine’s Confessionsbetween 397 and 400 · AfricaAugustine’s other great work, written some fifteen years earlier

Vandal conquest of Roman AfricaMay 429 – 442 · AfricaAugustine died in 430 during the Vandal siege of Hippo, a few years after finishing the book

Adjacent events in the thread

Augustine writes The City of God

Connections

Causes and preconditions

Related events

Adjacent events in the thread

Meanwhile in the world

Western and Central Europe

Eastern Europe

Balkans and Anatolia

Middle East and Egypt

Central and Northern Asia

South Asia

East Asia

Southeast Asia and Oceania

North America

Latin America

The same period

Sources