Book I
BOO K I Preface IIIY DEAR MARCELLINUS: 1 This work which I have " begun makes good my promise to you. In it I am undertaking nothing less than the task of defending the glorious City of God against those who prefer their own gods to its Founder. I shall consider it both in its temporal stage here below (where it journeys as a pilgrim among sinners and lives by faith) and as solidly established in its eternal abode-that blessed goal for which we patiently hope 'until justice be turned into judgment,'2 but which, one day, is to Marcellinus. fervent Christian and. until his death in September. 415. close friend of St. Augustine. was appointed by the Emperor Honorius (595-425) as a Comissioner to deal with the dispute between Catholics and Donatists in North Africa. Eager for the conversion of the pagan but well-disposed imperial proconsul. Volusianus. he sought the help of Augustine and was thus the occasion for the correspondence between the proconsul and the saint which still survives and tbrows much light on the beginnings of the City of God. Added to Volusianus' dogmatic difficulties was the tremendous scandal. for a pagan. that. after eight centuries of political stability under pagan worship and pagan philosophy of life. Rome should be attacked and looted in 410 by Alaric the Goth. less than one century after the conversion of Constantine to Christianity and less than thirty years after the Emperor Gratian. at the request of St. Ambrose. removed from the Senate the pagan altar to Victory. It was to face this difficulty that St. Augustine began in 412 (and finished in 415) the first five Books which. as he tells us in his Retractations (chap. 69). were meant as a refutation of the pagan position that polytheism is necessary for social prosperity and that the prohibition of pagan worship 'is the source of many calamities.' 2 Ps. 95.15. 17 18 SAINT AUGUSTINE be the reward of excellence in a final victory and a perfect peace. The task, I realize, is a high and hard one, but God will help me.3 I know, of course, what ingenuity and force of arguments are needed to convince proud men of the power of humility. Its loftiness is above the pinnacles of earthly greatness which are shaken by the shifting winds of time-not by reason of human arrogance, but only by the grace of God. For, in Holy Scripture, the King and Founder of the City of which I have undertaken to speak revealed to His people the judgment of divine law: 'God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humbIe.'4 Unfortunately the swollen spirit of human pride claims for itself this high prerogative, which belongs to God alone, and longs and loves to hear repeated in its own praise the line: 'To be merciful to the conquered and beat the haughty down.'6 Hence, in so far as the general plan of the treatise demands and my ability permits, I must speak also of the earthly city --of that city which lusts to dominate the world and which, though nations bend to its yoke, is itself dominated by its passion for dominion. Chapter 1 From this earthly city issue the enemies against whom the City of God must be defended. Some of them, it is true, abjure their worldly error and become worthy members in God's City. But many others, alas, break out in blazing hatred against it and are utterly ungrateful, notwithstanding its 11 Ps. 61.9. 4 James 4.6; 1 Peter 5.5. 5 Virgil, Aeneid 6.8511. THE CITY OF GOD: BOOK I 19 Redeemer's signal gifts. For, they would no longer have a voice to raise against it, had not its sanctuaries given them asylum as they fled before the invaders' swords, and made it possible for them to save that life of which they are so proud. Have not even those very Romans whom the barbarians spared for the sake of Christ assailed His Name? To this both the shrines of the martyrs and the basilicas of the Apostles bear witness: amid the city's devastation, these buildings gave refuge not only to the faithful but even to infidels. Up to the sacred threshold raged the murderous enemy, but the slayers' fury went no farther. The merciful among the enemy conducted to the churches those whom they had spared even outside the holy precincts, to save them...
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