De Civitate Dei Research Articles

Proceedings of the patristic, medieval, and Renaissance Conference (vol. 12/13 — 1987/1988) (review)

176 Reviews Proceedings of the patristic, medieval, and Renaissance Conference (vol. 12/13 - 1987/1988), Villanova, Augustinian Historical Institute, 1989; pp. ii, 279; R. R. P. ? This volume brings together papers from the twelfth and thirteenth annual international conferences on patristic, medieval and Renaissance Studies sponsored by the Augustinian Historical Institute of Vdlanova University. The two general sessions at the 1987 conference were devoted to themes in Augustine. Thus R. A. Markus writes on pride and the common good in the De Civitate Dei and Jaroslav Pelikan discusses Augustine's trinitarian hermeneutics in a paper which focuses on the much neglectedfirstpart of the De Trinitate. Topics in Shakespeare provide a rather different focus for the two corresponding sessions at the 1988 conference. Jill E. Levenson treats of dramatic and poetic forms in Romeo and Juliet interpreted as a 'tragical-comicallyrical history'. Jeanne Addison Roberts considers the portrayal of women in Shakespeare in terms of the ancient triple Hecate 'with her aspects of the virginal Diana, the maternal Juno or Lucina, and Proserpina, goddess of the underworld'. To these leading papers are added sixteen others on a variety of topics. While one cannot look for much unity in a collection of this sort, it is worth noting that there are two other papers with an Augustinian focus: F. Van Fletteren on themes in the De Trinitate and D. F. Donnelly on an obscure seventeenth-century tribute to Augustine. Furthermore, I. Dobbs-Weinstein's account of Maimonides on the nature of biblical language fits in well with Pelikan's paper. Feminist themes, developed in Roberts' paper on Shakespeare, emerge in some other papers in different contexts, notably in Christine ClarkEvans ' discussion of reading and writing in the Renaissance poetry of Pemette Du Gudlet and Louise Labe" and in Albrecht Classen's account of royal women in Middle High German romances. Papers on Plotinus and Ibn Gabirol, Renaissance cartography, scholastic traditions in the fourteenth century, Rhineland mysticism, Chaucer's version of the Man of Law's Tale, the fragmentary old English Life of St Christopher, and the story of Pilate in a number of Old Norse-Icelandic manuscripts, contribute to the variety of the coUection (without exhausting it). Nothing in this collection is outstanding, but there are many good papers and none that are bad so far as I can judge. Anyone with an interest across the patristic, medieval, and Renaissancefieldsis bound to find a good number of instructive papers. Philosophers are particularly well served in having Kevin Corrigan's very good paper on theories of matter in Plotinus and Ibn Gabirol, C. Ocker's guide to scholastic traditions in the fourteenth century, and the papers on Augustine and Maimonides. The four papers from the plenary sessions of the conference are all of considerable interest as might be expected. I wiU say a concluding word about the papers on Augustine by Markus and Pelikan. Reviews 111 PeUkan's treatment of Augustine's canonical rule (or rules) of interpretation in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity is both learned and accessible. But, in a short paper, Augustine's blend of confident theological affirmation on the one hand and negation on the other (to speak of God is 'to think things unspeakable') is not subjected to much critical analysis. It is not clear that a negative or apophatic theologian can speak quite so positively about the divine as Augustine does. R. A. Markus' paper deals with themes of intense interest in Augustine's social and political thought: the legitimacy of the respublica, the nature of political obligation, the significance of social and pubhc life, pride of empire as the vehicle of oppression at the expense of peace and justice, pride in the individual as the isolation of self from community and the desire for private goals at the expense of sociability and the common good. This is an excellent paper which is aU too short. Paul Crittenden Department of General Philosophy University of Sydney Tracey, James D., Holland under Habsburg rule, 1506-1566: the formation of a body politic, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990; cloth; pp. ix, 330; 4 maps, 12 tables; R. R. P. US$45.00. This is a prologue to...

Spolia from the Baths of Caracalla in Sta. Maria in Trastevere

Eight third-century Ionic capitals with images of Isis, Serapis, and Harpocrates, now in the nave colonnades of Sta. Maria in Trastevere, were taken from one or both of the rooms currently identified as libraries in the Baths of Caracalla. The capitals were transferred around 1140, when the church was rebuilt by Pope Innocent II. The capitals would have been acquired by confiscation, juridically the pope's prerogative as head of the papal state; the lavish display of all kinds of spolia in Sta. Maria in Trastevere is here interpreted as a self-conscious demonstration of that prerogative. The identity of the capitals' pagan images would have been unknown to most twelfth-century observers, because the only accessible keys to the correct identifications were one sentence in Varro's De lingua latina and another in Saint Augustine's De civitate Dei. Philological accuracy in interpretation is an anachronistic expectation in any case; medieval readings of the images would have been fanciful, based on association...

The Lure of Women, Hunting, Chess, and Tennis: A Vision

Trinity College Dublin manuscript 281 was written by several scribes in mid-fifteenth-century England,' apparently at the Charterhouse of Jesus of Bethlehem at Sheen, county Surrey.2 The codex contains numerous theological works such as Pseudo-Augustine's Speculum peccatoris, Adam de Dryburg's Sermon for St. John, Guigo II's Scala Paradisi, Richard Rolle's De emendatione vitae, Adam of Eynsham's Magna vita Sancti Hugonis Lincolniensis. On folio 22v stands a short piece that notices the books that are necessary for a priest: Necessaria sacerdoti. Libri officii ut leccionarius, antiphonarius, baptisterium, gradale, missale, liber compoti ut cognoscat festa mobilia et immobilia, liber sacramentorum ut sciat saltem in sacramentis ministrare, liber canonum penitencialium ut sciat discernere inter peccata et iniungere penitentias, liber omeliarurm Gregorii et Bede ut sciat exponere euuangelium populo. Contrasting with the Latin everywhere else in the codex is a Middle English vision on folio 161r. The vision, recorded in anglicana script, is preceded by an extract from Augustine's De civitate Dei (fols. 159r-160v) and is followed by a continuation of the extract (161v) and then by an exemplum (162r-v). The exemplum tells about the conversion of a Jew to Christianity when a communion host helped to banish an illusion of Christian saints in Hell. This exemplum is the linked with the vision, called reuelacio, in the fifteenth-century table of contents of the codex on folio 5r: Quedam reuelacio et quedam narracio de sacramento eukariste. The vision, perhaps in the form of a letter but possibly incomplete, exhorts a monk to remain in his order and expresses regret that the monk was intending to forsake life as a religious. The writer says that he fasted on

De Civitate Dei and the Commentaries of Gregory the Great, Isidore, Bede, and Hrabanus Maurus on the Book of Samuel

De Civitate Dei and the Commentaries of Gregory the Great, Isidore, Bede, and Hrabanus Maurus on the Book of Samuel

The World Grown Old and Genesis in Middle English Historical Writings

Modern historians of literature have approached primitivism in medieval writings through conventional topics such as the Fall, the Golden Age, and the six world ages. George Boas in 1948 demonstrated the numerous links between classical and medieval primitivisms, soft and hard, and he outlined various schemes of periodization by which medieval historians framed their chronicles.' Emerson, Kaske, and others have explored a special aspect of man's early history as interpreted by medieval writers the relationship between Cain, antediluvian giants, and Beowuif's Grendel.2 Recently, Ruth Mellinkoff has investigated the several legends surrounding Cain and his mysterious mark.3 Medieval primitivism based on Genesis essentially began with Augustine's exegetical history in De civitate Dei, book 15. In this work Augustine thoroughly rehearsed the Genesis events, and he labored to explain difficult narrative claims, such as the great age of antediluvian men like Methuselah (15.1 1), or obscure passages, such as the origin of giants from the sons of God (15.22-23). Augustine treated these and other issues as a scholar and historian, comparing the Vulgate with the Septuagint text and seeking the best, most reasonable interpretation. At the same time, he framed his historical exegesis generally in the context of six ages in decline and of the struggle between the earthly and heavenly cities. In Augustine's writings

Levana: Levitation in Jean Paul and Thomas de Quincey

JN DE CIVITATE DEI (IV.11), Saint Augustine ridicules the degeneration of the classical gods into a numerous tribe, each deity presiding over some particular domestic function. One of the many pagan tutelary deities whom Augustine mentions is the goddess Levana, whose function was to lift the newborn infant from the ground (Ipse leuet [eos] de terra et uocetur dea Leuana).J This seemingly insignificant goddess-a relic in a dying pagan tradition who only merits Augustine's briefest disdain-was invested with a new value in the early nineteenth century, as indicated by her importance to the German novelist, Jean Paul Richter, and his English admirer, Thomas De Quincey; their revival of Levana offers a key to certain features of the literature of education (Bildungsliteratur) during the Romantic period. For both authors, this otherwise unremarkable Roman deity was a dim, mythical prototype of the recurrent literary motif of the beautiful, enlightened woman who performs some kind of educational or consolatory service for a deluded or despairing spirit.2 For both of them, moreover, Levana

More's Utopia and The City of God

Homas More ‘read for a good space a public lecture of St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, in the Church of St. Lawrence in the Old Jewry’ shortly after his appointment about 1501 as Utter Barrister in Lincoln's Inn. Stapleton tells us that More's lectures did not treat The City of God ‘from the theological point of view, but from the standpoint of history and philosophy’; but Stapleton is relatively late (1588), and it is unclear whether he was rather inferring from More's situation as a layman and a common lawyer than speaking out of any real knowledge of the content of More's lectures. The lectures are not extant, but Stapleton's report together with the humanists’ anti-intellectualistic bias helps to shape conjecture on their character; Chambers thought they ‘may have embodied some of the criticism of social evils which More later put into Utopia’.

Two Readings of St Augustine

In the literature that survives from the ancient world Augustine is unrivalled, except perhaps by Cicero, for the range and intimacy of his writings. The lovely folio pages of the edition published in Paris by the Benedictines of St Maur from 1679-1700, still the most recent more or less complete edition of the extant works, contain by far the greater part of the titles catalogued after Augustine’s death by his disciple Possidius. Certainly enough has survived for us to see the personality and ideas of Augustine unfold over more than forty years, from the first flush of conversion at Cassiciacum, expressed in the almost adolescent idealism of the Soliloquia and the De beata vita, until his death at Hippo in 430, with the last chapters of the De civitate Dei completed some years before, and the Retractationes cut short, as scrupulosities should be.The Confessions were written in the earlier part of this period. In book seven Augustine tells us that he finally rid his mind of the lees of Manichaeism by his reading ‘certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin’ (vii 13: I have cited throughout the paragraph divisions of the Maurist edition, without the chapter divisions of the editio princeps). In book eight Augustine is converted to Christianity by reading St Paul. But the conversion has still a Platonic element, for Augustine describes his experience in the garden at Cassiciacum partly in language that Plotinus had used to describe the soul’s ascent to the beautiful.

Rutilius Namatianus, St. Augustine, and the Date of the De Reditu

One of St. Augustine's purposes in writing the De Civitate Dei was to counter the view which became current in pagan circles after Alaric's sack of Rome that Christianity was responsible for the disaster. To this end he quoted, introduced with the refrain ‘Ubi ergo erant illi dii ?’, many examples of similar disasters which the old gods had apparently been unable to ward of f in the pre-Christian period (III, 17 f.). In 1905 A. Dufourc pointed out that Rutilius Namatianus devotes a number of eloquent lines in his De Reditu to precisely the opposite claim, that Rome had risen with renewed and increased strength from each of these disasters (the Gauls, Samnites, Pyrrhus, Hannibal). Dufourc suggested that Rutilius had read Civ. Dei I–III, and that the De Red. was a pagan reply to Augustine's thesis. Little attention was paid to this suggestion at the time, but in 1948 P. Courcelle adduced further parallels between the two works, and claimed that Rutilius had read not only Civ. Dei I–III, but IV and V as well.

Roman Empire and Christian State in the "De civitate Dei"

Roman Empire and Christian State in the "De civitate Dei"

TWO CONCEPTIONS OF POLITICAL AUTHORITY: AUGUSTINE, DE CIVITATE DEl, XIX. 14–15, AND SOME THIRTEENTH-CENTURY INTERPRETATIONS

This chapter examines the use made by a number of thirteenth-century writers of Saint Augustine's statements about the origins and nature of political authority and subjection, mainly in the De civitate Dei, book xix, chapters 14 and 15. It also examine the meaning of Augustine's statements concerning the origins of political authority, obligation, and subordination in the two chapters of his De civitate Dei, in the light of other relevant passages. The chapter provides some thirteenth-century interpretations of the same chapters by a number of writers of both the Aristotelian and what is traditionally referred to as the 'Augustinian' schools. It discusses some light on the interpretation of Augustine's views primarily by St. Thomas Aquinas. The looseness of Augustine's conception of 'nature' is too notorious to require comment; and the extent to which one should speak of his conception of 'political' authority, and more of the 'state', is open to debate.

Studies in the Political and Socio-Religious Terminology of the De Civitate Dei

Studies in the Political and Socio-Religious Terminology of the De Civitate Dei

Studies in the Political and Socio-Religious Terminology of the De Civitate Dei

Studies in the Political and Socio-Religious Terminology of the De Civitate Dei

Saint Augustine's De Civitate Dei: Selections with Notes and Glossary

Saint Augustine's De Civitate Dei: Selections with Notes and Glossary

Introduction to St. Augustine. The City of God. Being Selections from the De Civitate Dei, including most of the XlXth book, with text, translation and running commentary. By R. H. Barrow. Faber and Faber Ltd.London. 30s.

Introduction to St. Augustine. The City of God. Being Selections from the De Civitate Dei, including most of the XlXth book, with text, translation and running commentary. By R. H. Barrow. Faber and Faber Ltd.London. 30s. - Volume 4 Issue 2

De Civitate Dei, XV, 2, and Augustine's Idea of the Christian Society

Previous articleNext article No AccessDe Civitate Dei, XV, 2, and Augustine's Idea of the Christian SocietyF. Edward CranzF. Edward Cranz Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 25, Number 2Apr., 1950 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2848926 Views: 14Total views on this site Citations: 9Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1950 The Mediaeval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Gary W. Jenkins The God-shaped Void in the Post-Theistic World: H. Tristram Engelhardt?s Quest in After God1, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality 23, no.22 (Jun 2017): 183–199.https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbx007Robert Dodaro Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine, 19/20 (Sep 2009).https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511487668 A DECADE OF RESEARCH ON EARLY CHRISTIANS AND MILITARY SERVICE, Religious Studies Review 18, no.22 (Apr 1992): 87–123.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-0922.1992.tb00084.xJ. H. Burns The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350–c.1450, 7 (Mar 2008).https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521243247R. A. Markus Introduction: the West, (May 1988): 81–91.https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521243247.007R.A. Markus The Latin fathers, (May 1988): 92–122.https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521243247.008P.D. King The barbarian kingdoms, (May 1988): 123–154.https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521243247.009James T. Palmer The end of civilisation (c. 380–c. 575), (): 25–54.https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316084144.003F. Edward Cranz Kingdom and Polity in Eusebius of Caesarea, Harvard Theological Review 45, no.11 (Aug 2011): 47–66.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017816000020678

Aspects of Mediaeval Thought on Church and State

“Two loves,” St. Augustine says in De Civitate Dei, “have made two cities, love of self unto contempt of God the Earthly City, love of God unto contempt of self the Heavenly City,” the City of God. These “cities”—civitates—are, of course, not states, but societies; St. Augustine himself tells us that the term civitas is an equivalent of the term society. They are societies, however, of a special kind. The Ciyitds Dei is a “mystical” society of all the elect, past, present and future. The Civitas Terrena, the Earthly City, is identical neither with the earthly state nor with any particular earthly state such as the Roman Empire, nor with any merely human society, it too is a “mystical” society, that of the impious, the damned.

Brief Compendium on the Sphere and Art of Navigating

Chapter 3—On the virtue and property of the lodestoneThe lodestone according to the Cardinal Cusanus has essence, virtue, and operation. The virtue is engendered by the essence; from the essence and virtue is born the operation, so that the stone communicating its virtue to the iron for this reason causes the iron to move although between them there be a silver dish or plate or something similar. The attractive force of the lodestone causes the nature of the iron to join with it and at rest so much that although heavy and weighty it does not fall because the nature of the iron does not remain in it but joins with the nature of the stone which seems to extend whence we see that by this union it happens that it not only attracts this iron but this to another, and another to another and thus is formed a chain* as experience has shown. St. Augustine was surprised as he has written in the books of “De Civitate Dei”1 because on a plate he saw a bit of iron agitated when the lodestone was moved about under the plate.

The Mediaeval Theory of the Tyrant

In that famous passage in his De Civitate Dei which has been called the first “Mirror of Princes,” St. Augustine outlines the qualities of the good king. The passage is toolong to quote here, but certain of the qualities listed are pertinent to this discussion. He tells us that kings are happyIf they rule justly; … if they make their power the handmaid of His majesty by using it for the greatest possible extension of His worship; … if more than their own they love that kingdom in which they are not afraid to have partners; if they are slow to punish, quick to pardon; if they apply that punishment as necessary to government and the defense of the republic, and not to gratify their own enmity; … if they prefer to govern depraved desires rather than any nation whatsoever; and if they do all these things, not through ardent desire of empty glory, but through love of eternal felicity, not neglecting to offer to the true God, who is their God, for their sins the sacrifices of humility, contrition, and prayer.

St. Augustine on Peace and War

‘If good people feel disgust at a nation which—simply with a view to extending its dominion—spontaneously provokes a war with neighbouring States which are at peace with it and have done them no harm—then I can only say that I applaud their praiseworthy feelings.’—De Civitate Dei, IV, xiv.Remarkably little seems to have been written on this subject. Yet Augustine is quite justly described as the Father of the Philosophy of History,’ and even if he had not treated of the subject almost ‘ex professo ‘—as we hope to show—no remarks of his on the part war has played in the history of the world could fail to be of interest. So far the only discussion on his attitude to the problems are a Paper by Fr. Vincent Scully, C.R.L., in the Clergy Review for Feb., 1932, and also Ypres de la Brière, La Conception de la Paix et de la Guerre chez S. Augustin, Revue de la Philosophic, 1916. See too R. Regout, S.J., La doctrine de la guerre juste de S. Augustin ii nos jours d'apres les théologiens et les canonistes catholiques, 1935, though the author is more concerned with Franciscus de Victoria who has, he thinks, broken with scholastic teaching on the requisites for a just war.The above passage—so peculiarly apropos to the events of to-day—shows us what the Bishop of Hippo’s reactions to the present crisis would have been. Yet to gentle, peace- loving Augustine, ever absorbed in the needs spiritual as well as temporal of his flock, war was-—as indeed it must be to every thinking man—-something unspeakably horrible.