The City of God

Presentation

It opposes to it the terrestrial Cité and the celestial city:

“By writing this work of which you me suggested the first thought, Marcellinus, my very expensive sons, and which I promised to you to carry out, I come to defend the City of God against those which prefer with its founder their false divinities; I come to show this always glorious city, either that one considers it in his pilgrimage through time, living of faith in the middle of the incrédules, or that one contemplates it in the stability of the stay eternal, that it waits at present with patience, until patience changes into force at the day of the supreme victory and perfect peace. This is why we will have once to speak more in this work, as much as our plan will comprise it, of this terrestrial city devoured of the desire to dominate and which is itself slave of its covetousness, while she believes being the mistress of the nations. ”

The author had been marked by the Chute of Rome, which had deeply disconcerted it, but it for a long time projected to write a book on the kingdom of God and the terrestrial Church. How the city or the pope could resided thus crumble, and its civilization (which since Constantin I {{er}} were strongly Christian, and officially Christian woman since Théodose Ier) apparently to start to disappear?

The attempt at answer is that the building for which it is advisable to stick and work is not the city of the men, but what he names the city of God. The subject of work is thus the opposition of the two cities, their origins, their development, their end:

the two cities, indeed, are frays and confused together during this terrestrial life until they separate with the last judgment. To expose their birth, their progress and their end, it is what I will try to make, with the assistance of the sky and for the glory of the city of God, who will draw from this contrast a sharper glare (I delivers).

Initially (books one to ten), Augustin treats Religion the Old ones which he regards as superstiteuse: on the one hand he refutes those which adore the Gods for the advantages that they get in this life (books one to five), on the other hand, those which seek the eternal happiness by these same gods (books six to ten); the books eleven to twenty-two are devoted at the origin and the oppositions of the two cities.

The plundering of Rome by the Goths (first delivers)

The Romans, after the plundering of Rome, allotted these misfortunes to the Christian Religion and, in particular, to the prohibition of the worship of the Gods. Augustin protests against this opinion:

on the one hand, the Roman gods are completely impotent to protect the pagan ones, and it is the name of the Christ who, in the general horror, made save many people, even not-Christian women. Those which were thus saved are thus particularly ungrateful to insult it today.
in addition, the goods as the malicious ones also undergo the evils of this life. Thus, to justify the evil, Augustin it supports that the malicious ones undergo it to be corrected, and goods to be strengthened in their virtue and to avoid faults to come. They underline in particular that one should not attach too much importance to the damage undergone by the body: only the Conscience is for us the witness of our purity. For example, according to him, the rape of the mothers and the virgins by the barbarians is not a fault for these women, if they maintained their virtue of chastity internally. This insult should not thus lead to the suicide, because the dignity of these women is intact, and it is their value there.

The Worship of the false Roman gods (books second and third)

Augustin shows that Rome protected forever by his Gods, and that those are thus false; all that Rome received from its gods they are the defects and the corruption of the heart (delivers second) and the evils related to the wordly goods (third delivers).

The true origin of the Roman power (fourth delivers)

Augustin shows in this book that they are not the gods who allowed the size of the Roman power, but the sovereign decrees of the God single and true.

Importance and value of work

literary Judgment: from the point of view of construction and argumentation, the Cité of God was considered severely for some of its parts (for example books VI with X) confused, out-subject, sophistical, and filled of misconception in connection with some of the adversaries of Augustin.
cultural Influence:

Internal bonds

the Confessions | the Trinity
Louis Giry, author of the first translation of the City of God in French, appeared in 1665.

External bonds

the City of God

Random links: