c. 413 – 426 CE · Hippo Regius, Roman North Africa (modern Annaba, Algeria)
Augustine completes the City of God
After the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, the bishop of Hippo spent thirteen years writing the De Civitate Dei, reading history as the tension between two parallel cities — the City of God and the Earthly City — and laying down the spine of Christian philosophy.
Augustine (354–430) was born in a small town in Numidia (modern Algeria), trained in rhetoric at Carthage, passed through Manichaeism and then Neoplatonism, and in 386 converted to Christianity in Milan under the influence of Ambrose. He served first as priest and then for thirty-five years as bishop of Hippo Regius.
When Alaric's Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, the foundations of the ancient world shook. Many pagans blamed the catastrophe on Christianity: 'Rome fell because the old gods were abandoned.' Augustine wrote the De Civitate Dei (the City of God) in answer. Twenty-two books, thirteen years. Its central claim: there are two cities — the City of God, founded on love of God, and the Earthly City, founded on love of self. Rome, like Babylon before it, and whatever political form will come, belongs to the transient Earthly City; the Christian's true citizenship lies in the City of God.
That frame shaped the West's relation between religion and politics for the next millennium. The legitimacy of the state, the source of morality, the conditions under which war can be just (the first nucleus of Augustine's 'just war' theory), the theological meaning of time and free will — medieval Europe approached all of these questions starting from Augustine's texts. Aquinas inherited him directly; so did the Reformation. Augustine is the first great thinker to weld classical philosophy onto Christian revelation.
Location
Hippo Regius, Roman North Africa (modern Annaba, Algeria) · © OpenStreetMap
Sources
- Augustine of Hippo — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Stanford University
- The City of God — Encyclopedia Britannica — Encyclopædia Britannica