Introduction

Summary

Why letters and sermons?

‘I beg you as a Christian to a judge and I warn you as a bishop to a Christian’, wrote Augustine in a letter to Apringius, proconsul of Africa. In the City of God Augustine lays out on a vast canvas the themes of Christianity and paganism, providence and power, empire and church, and divine and human justice, writing as a learned Christian apologist, an intellectual addressing his peers. It is easy to forget that he was also, and before all else, a Christian pastor. As a bishop, he struggled with the daily reality of political life in a society in which ‘church’ and ‘state’ had never been, and could not conceivably be, disentangled. In this context, ‘justice’ referred not to the rise and fall of empires, but to the decision whether to punish or to pardon a Donatist thug who had beaten up one of his priests. ‘War’ was not merely a theological construct: an instrument of divine wrath or divine education. It was happening in the next province, where one of Augustine's old acquaintances was responsible for warding off the barbarian raiders. ‘Civic power’ may have been embodied symbolically in the emperor in distant Rome, but here in north Africa it was men like Augustine's correspondent Apringius who made the decisions that mattered.