OF THE DIVINE AURELIUS AUGUSTINE

BISHOP OF HIPPO, TO MARCELLINUS ON THE

City of God, Against the Pagans, Book One.

A large historiated woodcut initial 'G' depicts a seated scholar, likely Saint Augustine, writing at a desk with a book and lectern.

A I have undertaken to defend the most glorious City of God, either in this course of time, where it wanders as a pilgrim among the impious while living by faith, or in that stability of the eternal seat which it now awaits through patience, until justice is turned into judgment, and which it shall thereafter attain through excellence in final victory and perfect peace, in this work instituted for you, my dearest son Marcellinus, and owed to you by my promise. It is a great and arduous work, but God is our helper. For I know what strength is required to persuade the proud how great the virtue of humility is, by which it comes to pass that all earthly summits, tottering in temporal instability, are transcended not by a greatness usurped through human arrogance, but by one granted through divine grace. For the King and founder of this city, of which we have undertaken to speak, revealed in the scripture of his people the judgment of the divine law, by which it is said: God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. But this, which belongs to God, a puffed-up and proud soul also affects, and loves to have said of itself in praises:

To spare the submissive and to war down the proud.

B

Hence, even regarding the earthly city, which, when it desires to dominate, is itself dominated by the lust for power even if the people serve it: we must not pass over in silence whatever the reason of this work we have undertaken demands to be said, and for which the opportunity is given. For from this city arise the enemies against whom the City of God must be defended. Yet many of them, having corrected the error of impiety, become quite suitable citizens in it; many others, however, burn against it with such fires of hatred, and are so ungrateful for the manifest benefits of its Redeemer, that they would be moving their tongues against it today, had they not, in fleeing the enemy's sword, found life—of which they are proud—in its sacred places. Are not those Romans also hostile to the name of Christ, whom the barbarians spared on account of Christ? The places of the martyrs and the basilicas of the apostles bear witness to this, which in that devastation of the city received those, both their own and strangers, who fled to them for refuge. The bloody enemy raged up to this point: there the fury of the slayer received its limit. To those places were led by the merciful enemies even those whom they had spared outside those very places, so that they might not fall into the hands of those who did not have such mercy. Those very enemies, however, who were elsewhere savage and raging in the manner of war, after they came to those places where what had been permitted by the law of war elsewhere was forbidden, the entire ferocity of striking was reined in, and the greed for taking captives was broken. Thus escaped many who now disparage Christian times and impute to Christ the evils which that city suffered. They do not, however, impute to our Christ the good things that were done for them—that they might live—on account of the honor of Christ, but rather to their own fate. If they were right-minded, they ought rather to attribute those things they suffered, which were harsh and hard from the enemy, to that divine providence which is accustomed to amend and crush the corrupt morals of men through wars; and likewise to exercise the just and praiseworthy life of mortals with such afflictions, and to transfer a life proven either to better things or to retain it still in these lands for other uses. That which was done for them anywhere, either on account of the name of Christ, or in places most dedicated to the name of Christ and the most spacious, and chosen for a broader mercy to accommodate the multitude, contrary to the custom of wars, the ferocious