BOOK I. PREFACE. Concerning the plan and argument of the work undertaken. The most glorious City of God—whether in this present course of time, while she journeys as a pilgrim among the ungodly, living by faith, or in that fixed estate of the eternal seat which she now awaits with patience, until righteousness be turned into judgment, and which she shall then obtain by excellence in final victory and perfect peace—I have undertaken in this work, established for you and owed by my promise to you, to defend against those who prefer their own gods to her Founder, dearest son Marcellinus: a great and arduous work, but God is our helper. For I know with what strength there is need.
that it may be brought home to the proud how great is the power of humility, by which it comes about that the loftiness which is given by divine grace—not usurped by human arrogance—surpasses all earthly summits that totter with temporal instability. For the King and Founder of this City, of which we have undertaken to speak, has in the Scripture of His people revealed the verdict of the divine law, in which it is said: 'God resists the proud, but to the humble He gives grace.' But this, which belongs to God, the puffed-up spirit of a proud soul also affects, and loves to have said of itself in its praises: 'To spare the subjected and to subdue the proud.'
Wherefore also concerning the earthly city—which, when it seeks to dominate, even though peoples serve it, is itself dominated by its very lust for domination—nothing is to be passed over in silence of whatever the plan of this undertaken work demands to be said and the capacity permits. CHAPTER I. Concerning the adversaries of the name of Christ, whom in the devastation of the City the barbarians spared on account of Christ. For from this city arise the enemies against whom the City of God is to be defended; yet many of them, correcting the error of their impiety, become citizens within her quite fit for the purpose;
but many indeed blaze up against her with such great fires of hatred, and are so ungrateful for the manifest benefits of her Redeemer, that today they would not be moving their tongues against her, had they not, fleeing the enemy's sword, found in her sacred places that life of which they boast. Are not even those Romans hostile to the name of Christ whom the barbarians spared on account of Christ? The shrines of the martyrs and the basilicas of the apostles bear witness to this, which in that devastation of the City received those who fled to them, both their own people and strangers.
Up to this point the bloodthirsty enemy raged; there the fury of the slaughterer received its limit; thither were they led by enemies showing mercy—enemies who had spared, even outside those places, those whom they might otherwise have attacked, lest they fall upon men who showed no like mercy. Yet these same men, who elsewhere were savage and raging in hostile fashion, after they came to those places where what would have been lawful elsewhere by the law of war had been forbidden, restrained all the cruelty of striking and broke off their lust for taking captives. Thus many escaped who now disparage Christian times and impute to Christ the evils which that city endured; but the good things which were done to them, that they might live, for the honor of Christ.
they impute not to our Christ but to their own fate, whereas they ought rather, if they had any right understanding, to ascribe those harsh and hard things which they suffered from the enemy to that divine providence which is wont by wars to amend and grind down the corrupted morals of men, and likewise to exercise by such afflictions the just and praiseworthy life of mortals, and, when it has been proved, either to transfer it to better things or to detain it still on these earths for other uses:
But this—that even amid such things, on account of the name of Christ, or in places most consecrated to the name of Christ and most spacious, and chosen for the sake of a more abundant mercy to hold the capacity of the multitude, the truculent barbarians, contrary to the custom of war, spared them—this they ought to ascribe to Christian times, hence to give thanks to God, hence truly to flee to His name, that they might escape the penalties of eternal fire, which name many of them falsely usurped, that they might escape the penalties of present destruction. For among those whom you see wantonly and insolently insulting the servants of Christ, there are very many who would not have escaped that ruin and slaughter, had they not feigned themselves to be servants of Christ.
And now with ungrateful pride and most impious madness they resist His name with a perverse heart, that they may be punished with everlasting darkness—His name, to which they fled with mouth, even though deceitful, that they might enjoy the temporal light. CHAPTER II. That no wars were ever so waged that the victors, on account of the gods of those whom they had conquered, spared the conquered. So many wars have been waged and recorded, whether before the founding of Rome or from its rise and dominion: let them read and bring forward that any city was so captured by foreigners, that the enemies who had taken it spared those whom they found to have fled to the temples of their gods; or that any leader of barbarians commanded that, when a town was stormed, none should be struck who had been found in this or that temple.
Did not Aeneas see 'Priam at the altars, defiling with blood the fires which he himself had hallowed'? Did not 'Diomedes and Ulysses, having slain the guards of the topmost citadel, snatch the sacred image, and with bloody hands dare to touch the virgin fillets of the goddess'? Yet what follows is not true: 'From that time the hope of the Greeks ebbed and, slipping back, was carried away.' For afterward they conquered, afterward they destroyed Troy with sword and fire, afterward they cut down Priam as he fled to the altar. Nor did Troy perish because she lost Minerva. For what had Minerva herself first lost, that she should perish? Was it perhaps her own guardians? This indeed is true; for once they were slain, she could be carried off. For it was not the men who were kept safe by the image, but the image by the men.
How then was she worshiped, that she might guard the homeland and the citizens, she who could not guard her own guards? CHAPTER III. How imprudently the Romans believed that the household gods (penates), who had not been able to guard Troy, would profit them. Behold, in what gods the Romans rejoiced to have committed the City to be preserved! O too pitiable an error! And they are indignant with us when we say such things about their gods; nor are they indignant with their own authors, to whom they paid a fee to learn them, and whom they besides counted most worthy both of a public salary and of honors.
Indeed in Virgil, whom little children read for this very reason—that the great poet, the most renowned and best of all, being imbibed by tender minds, may not easily be effaced by forgetfulness, according to that saying of Horace: 'The jar will long keep the scent with which, when new, it was once steeped'—in this Virgil, then, Juno is brought in, hostile to the Trojans, saying to Aeolus, king of the winds, to incite him against them: 'A race hateful to me sails the Tyrrhenian sea, carrying Ilium into Italy and the conquered penates.' Was it then to these conquered penates that prudent men ought to have entrusted Rome, that she might not be conquered? But Juno said these things like an angry woman, not knowing what she was saying. What of Aeneas himself, so often called 'pious'—does he not narrate thus:
'Panthus, son of Othrys, priest of the citadel and of Phoebus, himself drags with his hand the sacred things and the conquered gods and his little grandson, and frantically in his course makes for the threshold'? Does he not declare that the gods themselves—whom he does not hesitate to call conquered—were entrusted to him rather than himself to them, when it is said to him: 'To you Troy commends her sacred things and her penates'? If therefore Virgil says that such gods were both conquered and, that even when conquered they might somehow escape, were commended to a man: what madness it is to think that Rome was wisely committed to such guardians, and that, unless it had lost them, it could not have been laid waste! Nay rather, to worship conquered gods as guardians and defenders—what else is it than to hold not good deities, but bad names?
For how much more wisely is it believed, not that Rome would not have come to that calamity unless they had first perished, but rather that they would long ago have perished, had not Rome preserved them as far as it could! For who, when he considers it, does not see with how great vanity it was presumed that they could not be conquered under conquered defenders, and that they perished because they lost their guardian gods, when the only possible cause of perishing could have been the will to have guardians that were going to perish? Therefore, when those things about the conquered gods were being written and sung, it was not that it pleased the poets to lie, but truth compelled men of sense to confess. But these matters are to be treated more diligently and copiously in another place, more opportunely:
Now let me, as I can, briefly dispatch what I had set out to say about the ungrateful men, who, blaspheming, impute to Christ those evils which they deservedly suffer for the perversity of their morals; but that they are spared, even such men, on account of Christ, they do not even deign to attend to, and they exercise those tongues against His name with the madness of a sacrilegious perversity—those very tongues with which they falsely usurped that very name, that they might live, or which tongues they suppressed in fear in the places consecrated to Him, that, being there safe and protected, where on His account they were unharmed by the enemy, they might thence leap out against Him with hostile curses. CHAPTER IV.
Concerning the asylum of Juno in Troy, which freed no one from the Greeks, and the basilicas of the apostles, which defended from the barbarians all who fled to them. Troy herself, as I said, the mother of the Roman people, could not protect her citizens, in the consecrated places of her gods, from the fires and sword of the Greeks, who worshiped those same gods; nay even 'in the asylum of Juno the chosen guards, Phoenix and dire Ulysses, were keeping watch over the spoil; hither from every side the treasure of Troy, snatched from the burning shrines, and the tables of the gods and bowls of solid gold and captive raiment are heaped up. Boys and trembling mothers in a long line stand round about.' A place consecrated to so great a goddess was chosen, forsooth—not one from which it was not permitted to lead out captives, but where it pleased them to shut captives in.
Compare now that asylum, not of any common god of the rabble or of the throng of the populace, but of Jupiter himself's sister and wife and queen of all the gods, with the memorial shrines of our apostles. Thither were carried the spoils snatched from the burnt temples and the gods—not to be given to the conquered, but to be divided among the conquerors; but hither, what was found elsewhere to belong to those places was carried back with honor and most religious reverence. There liberty was lost, here preserved; there captivity was shut in, here forbidden; there men were pressed into captivity to be possessed by domineering enemies, hither they were led to be set free by enemies showing mercy:
Finally, that temple of Juno the avarice and pride of the frivolous little Greeks had chosen for themselves; these basilicas of Christ the mercy and humility of even the savage barbarians chose. Unless perhaps the Greeks indeed, in that victory of theirs, spared the temples of the gods they had in common, and did not dare to strike or take captive the wretched and conquered Trojans who fled thither, but Virgil, after the manner of poets, lied about those things. Nay rather, he described the manner of enemies overthrowing cities. CHAPTER V. Concerning the general custom of enemies overthrowing conquered cities, what Cato thought. This custom even Cato, as Sallust writes—a historian of ennobled truthfulness—does not omit to recall in his opinion which he delivered in the senate concerning the conspirators:
'That maidens and boys are ravished, children torn from the embrace of their parents, matrons subjected to whatever pleased the victors, temples and houses despoiled, slaughter and conflagration carried out: in short, that all things are filled with arms, corpses, blood, and mourning.' Here, if he had passed over the temples in silence, we might suppose that enemies are wont to spare the abodes of the gods. And these things the Roman temples feared not from foreign enemies, but from Catiline and his associates, most noble senators and Roman citizens. But these, of course, were lost men and parricides of their fatherland. CHAPTER VI. That not even the Romans ever so captured any cities that in their temples they spared the conquered.
Why then should our discourse range through the many nations which waged wars among themselves and nowhere spared the conquered in the seats of their gods? Let us look at the Romans themselves, the very ones, I say; let us recall and regard the Romans, of whose chief praise it was said: 'To spare the subjected and to subdue the proud,' and that, when injury was received, they preferred to pardon rather than to pursue: when they stormed, captured, and overthrew so many and so great cities, that they might rule far and wide, let there be read to us which temples they were wont to exempt, so that whoever fled to them might be set free. Or did they so act, and did the writers of those same deeds keep silent about this?
But would those who especially sought out things to praise pass over these most illustrious tokens of piety, as they reckoned them? The distinguished man of the Roman name, Marcus Marcellus, who took Syracuse, a most adorned city, is reported first to have wept over it as it was about to fall, and to have shed his own tears for it before its blood. He took care also that chastity should be preserved even in the enemy. For before the victor had ordered the town to be invaded, he established by edict that no one should violate a free body. Yet the city was overthrown after the manner of wars, nor is it anywhere read that it was commanded by so chaste and clement a commander, that whoever fled to this or that temple should be held unharmed.
This would by no means have been passed over, since neither his weeping nor what he had decreed concerning chastity being in no wise violated could be kept silent. Fabius, the overthrower of the city of Tarentum, is praised for having abstained from the plunder of the images. For when his scribe suggested to him what he ordered to be done about the statues of the gods, of which many had been captured, he seasoned his self-restraint even with a jest. For he asked of what sort they were, and when it was reported to him that there were not only many great ones, but even armed ones, 'Let us leave,' he said, 'the angry gods to the Tarentines.' Since therefore the writers of Roman deeds could not keep silent either about that man's weeping or this man's laughter, neither about that man's restrained mercy nor this man's witty self-restraint: when would it have been passed over.
if they had so spared any men in honor of some one of their gods, that they forbade slaughter or captivity to take place in any temple? CHAPTER VII. That in the overthrow of the City, the things which were done harshly happened according to the custom of war; but the things which were done clemently proceeded from the power of the name of Christ. Whatever, then, of devastation, slaughter, plundering, burning, and affliction was committed in that most recent Roman calamity, the custom of wars did this;
but what was done after a new manner—that with an unwonted aspect of things the barbarous savagery appeared so mild, that the most spacious basilicas were chosen and decreed to be filled with the people who were to be spared, where no one was to be struck, whence no one was to be carried off, whither many were to be led by enemies showing mercy to be set free, whence none were to be carried into captivity even by cruel enemies: whoever does not see that this is to be ascribed to the name of Christ, to the Christian time, is blind; whoever sees it and does not praise, is ungrateful; whoever resists him who praises, is insane. Far be it that any prudent man should impute this to the ferocity of the barbarians. The most truculent and savage minds He terrified, He bridled, He wondrously tempered, who long beforehand said through the prophet:
'I will visit their iniquities with a rod, and their sins with scourges; but my mercy I will not scatter away from them.' CHAPTER VIII. Concerning the advantages and disadvantages which are for the most part common to the good and the bad. Someone will say: 'Why then did that divine mercy come even to the impious and ungrateful?' Why do we suppose, unless because He bestowed it who daily makes His sun to rise upon the good and the bad, and rains upon the just and the unjust?
For although some of them, considering these things, by repenting correct themselves from their impiety, while others indeed, as the apostle says, despising the riches of God's goodness and longsuffering, after their hardness of heart and impenitent heart, treasure up for themselves wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his works: nevertheless the patience of God invites the wicked to repentance, as the scourge of God instructs the good unto patience; and likewise the mercy of God embraces the good to cherish them, as the severity of God seizes the wicked to punish them. For it has pleased divine providence to prepare for the future good things for the just, which the unjust shall not enjoy, and evil things for the impious, with which the good shall not be tormented;
but these temporal goods and evils He willed to be common to both, that neither might the goods be too greedily desired, which the wicked also are seen to possess, nor the evils shamefully shunned, with which the good also are for the most part afflicted. But it makes the greatest difference of what sort is the use either of those things which are prosperous, or of those which are called adverse. For the good man is neither exalted by temporal goods nor broken by evils; but the bad man is for this reason punished by this kind of unhappiness, because he is corrupted by happiness. Yet God often shows His operation more evidently even in the distribution of these. For if now every sin were punished with manifest penalty, nothing would be thought to be reserved for the last judgment;
again, if the divinity now openly punished no sin, it would be believed that there is no divine providence. Likewise in prosperous matters, if God did not grant them with most evident bounty to certain who ask, we should say that these things do not pertain to Him; and likewise if He gave them to all who ask, we should judge that He is to be served only for the sake of such rewards, nor would such service make us pious, but rather greedy and avaricious. Since these things are so, whoever, good and bad alike, were afflicted, are not therefore not distinguished, because that which both suffered was not distinct. For the dissimilarity of the sufferers remains even in the similarity of the sufferings, and although they are under the same torment, the virtue and the vice are not the same.
For as under one fire gold gleams red and chaff smokes, and under the same threshing-sledge the stalks are crushed and the grain is cleansed, nor is the dross mingled with the oil because it is pressed out by the same weight of the press: so one and the same force, rushing in, proves, purifies, refines the good, but condemns, devastates, exterminates the bad. Whence in the same affliction the bad detest and blaspheme God, but the good pray and praise. So great is the difference—not what sort of things, but of what sort each one suffers them. For when stirred by the same motion, the mire exhales a horrible stench and the ointment fragrantly gives off a sweet scent. CHAPTER IX. Concerning the causes of correction, for which both the good and the bad are scourged alike.
What then did the Christians suffer in that devastation of things, which would not rather, to those faithfully considering these matters, avail unto their advancement? First, that, humbly considering the very sins on account of which God, being indignant, filled the world with such great calamities, although they are far from the wicked, the disgraceful, and the impious, yet they do not so reckon themselves alien from offenses, that they should judge themselves unworthy to suffer temporal evils for them.
For—setting aside the fact that each one, however praiseworthily he lives, yields in certain things to carnal concupiscence, even if not unto the enormity of crimes and the gulf of disgraceful deeds and the abomination of impiety, yet to some sins, whether rare or so much the more frequent as they are smaller—this then being set aside, who at last is easily found, who would so regard, as they ought to be regarded, those very men on account of whose horrendous pride and luxury and avarice and execrable iniquities and impieties God, as He foretold with threatening, grinds down the lands? Who would so live with them as one ought to live with such men?
For most often the duty of teaching, admonishing, and at times even rebuking and correcting them is wrongly neglected, whether because the labor is irksome, or because we are ashamed to offend their countenance, or because we shun enmities, lest they hinder and harm us in these temporal matters—whether those which our cupidity still strives to acquire, or those which our weakness dreads to lose; so that, although the life of the wicked displeases the good, and therefore they do not fall with them into that damnation which is prepared for such after this life, nevertheless, because for that reason they spare their damnable sins while they fear them in their own (albeit slight and venial) matters, they are justly scourged with them in temporal things, although they are by no means punished in eternity; justly they feel this life bitter when they are afflicted by God along with them—this life whose sweetness, by loving, they were unwilling should be bitter to those sinning.
For if anyone spares those who do evil from rebuking and correcting them because he seeks a more opportune time, or fears for those very persons, lest they be made worse by it, or lest they hinder others, weak ones who need to be instructed unto a good and pious life, and oppress them and turn them from the faith: this seems to be not an occasion of cupidity, but a counsel of charity. That is blameworthy, when those who live differently and shrink from the deeds of the wicked nevertheless spare the sins of others, which they ought to unteach or rebuke, while they guard against their offenses, lest these harm them in those things which the good use lawfully and innocently, but more greedily than was fitting for those who sojourn in this world and bear before themselves the hope of the heavenly fatherland.
For not only the weaker, leading a married life, having children or seeking to have them, possessing houses and households (whom the apostle addresses in the churches, teaching and admonishing how they ought to live—both wives with husbands and husbands with wives, and children with parents and parents with children, and servants with masters and masters with servants), willingly acquire many temporal, many earthly things and lose them with grief, on account of which they do not dare to offend men whose most contaminated and most wicked life displeases them; but even those who hold a higher grade of life and are not entangled in marriage bonds and use
scanty food and clothing, for the most part, while they fear the snares and assaults of the wicked against their reputation and safety, abstain from reproving them; and although they do not so fear them as to yield to perpetrating like deeds at any of their threats and wickednesses, yet those very deeds which they do not perpetrate with them, they nevertheless for the most part are unwilling to rebuke, when perhaps by rebuking they might correct some, lest, if they should not be able, their own safety and reputation come into peril and ruin—not from that consideration by which they see their reputation and safety to be necessary for the benefit of men to be instructed, but rather from that weakness by which the flattering tongue and human favor delight, and the judgment of the crowd is dreaded, and the torture of the flesh or its loss is feared; that is, on account of certain bonds of cupidity, not on account of the offices of charity.
It does not therefore seem to me a small reason why, when the wicked are scourged, the good are scourged along with them, whenever it pleases God to punish corrupt morals even with the affliction of temporal penalties. For they are scourged together, not because they lead an evil life together, but because together they love the temporal life — not equally, indeed, yet together — a life which the good ought to despise, so that the wicked, being rebuked and corrected, might attain the eternal life. And if these latter were unwilling to be companions in attaining it, they should be borne with and loved even as enemies; for as long as they live it is always uncertain whether they will change their will for the better. In this matter the good have not merely an equal but a far weightier cause, those to whom it is said through the prophet:
He indeed shall die in his own sin, but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand. For to this end watchmen — that is, the rulers set over the peoples — are appointed in the churches, that they should not spare to rebuke sins. Nor yet is anyone entirely free from this kind of guilt who, though he be not a ruler, nevertheless knows of many things needing admonition or reproof in those to whom he is joined by the necessity of this life, and yet neglects them, avoiding their displeasure on account of those things which in this life he uses not improperly, but in which he takes more delight than he ought. Then the good have another reason why they are afflicted with temporal evils, such as Job had:
that the human soul might be tested and made known to itself, with how great a strength of piety it loves God freely, for nothing in return. CHAPTER X. That to the saints nothing is lost in the loss of temporal things. When these things are rightly considered and clearly perceived, mark well whether any evil has befallen the faithful and the godly which was not turned to their good — unless perchance we are to suppose that apostolic sentence to be void where he says: We know that to those who love God all things work together for good. They lost all they possessed. Their faith? Their godliness? The goods of the inner man, who is rich before God? These are the riches of Christians, with which the Apostle, being wealthy, said: But godliness with contentment is great gain.
For we brought nothing into this world, and neither can we carry anything out. But having food and covering, with these let us be content. For those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful desires, which plunge men into ruin and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evils, which some coveting have strayed from the faith and have entangled themselves in many sorrows. Those, therefore, whose earthly riches perished in that devastation, if they so possessed them — as they had heard from that man who was poor without and rich within — that is, if they used the world as not using it, were able to say what that man, sorely tried and in no way overcome, said:
Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return into the earth. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it is done; blessed be the name of the Lord. Thus the good servant counted his great possessions to be the very will of his Lord, to whom, following close in mind, he grew rich; nor was he grieved while living to be left without those things which, dying, he was soon to leave behind. But those weaker ones, who, though they did not prefer these earthly goods to Christ, yet clung to them with some measure of desire, felt by losing them how much they had sinned by loving them. For they grieved just as much as they had entangled themselves in sorrows, as I recalled above that the Apostle said.