Sixteen Centuries Later, Augustine of Hippo Still Speaks

Last week I began listening to a series of lectures from The Great Courses series titled Books That Matter: The City of God. The author of that massive tome was the Fourth Century luminary Augustine of Hippo. The lectures are by Charles Mathewes who earned his PhD in Religion from the University of Chicago.

Several decades ago I read Augustine's Confessions, and perhaps ten years ago listened to a lecture series on Augustine himself. This series is entirely dedicated to Augustine's opus.

In both the church and the Dylan song that references him (John Wesley Harding album) he's referred to. as St. Augustine. He lived from 354 to 430, which in those days was a pretty full life.  

Keep in mind that all his writings were produced in the era before printing presses, so it is unlikely that such a volume as The City of God, which is more than a thousand pages in length, would have been a bestseller in its day. They didn't have typewriters, and it's probable that the scribes he dictated the book to got writers cramp from time to time. 

The City of God was one of Augustine's later works. He lived during the fall of the Roman empire and saw the sack of Rome in 410 A.D., events that no doubt influenced his ideas about what matters most in the grand scheme of things. According to Mathewes, The City of God, is one of the most important books in Western civilization. You may not have even heard of it, but it's been highly influential in the 1600 years since it was written.  

This book is not about the fall of Rome and collapse of its empire. It was only written with that as a backdrop. 

If you're like me, you've probably pictured the invasion of the Visigoths from the North as violent warriors coming down into Roman territories with unsheathed swords, violent and terrifying. Eventually they pillage the Capitol of the Empire. The reality was quite different. 

First, by the time the empire was collapsing, Rome wasn't even the capitol any more. Constantine had moved the Capitol of the empire to Constantinople in 330, decades before the sack of Rome. 

Second, the Visigoths were not "giant, ignorant cavemen wearing animal skins" who plundered the countryside and then the City of Rome itself. Rather, they came to Rome decades earlier with their families as immigrants and refugees striving to escape the Huns. This began in 376 and by the 400s they were Arian Christians who were quite at home in this civilized culture. (I find this quite interesting in light of our current debates over immigration policy.)

Much more can be said, but my intent here was to more or less give a little background on Augustine to give context to these quotes from an "Early Church Father." 

Ten Quotes from St. Augustine

1. "Love the sinner, hate the sin."

2. "Patience is the companion of wisdom."

3. "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

4. "As a youth I prayed, 'Give me chastity and self-restraint, but not right now.'"

5. "I have become a question to myself."

6. "Doubt is the origin of wisdom."

7. "What is love's perfection? To love our enemies, and to love them to the end that they may be our brothers."

8. "Anger is a weed; hate is the tree."

9. "I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them, 'Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden.'"

10. "I do not know what I do not know."

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Related Links

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine and Thoughts on Being Human

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine: An Early Dylan Morality Play