No book except the Bible itself had a greater influence on the Middle Ages than City of God. Since medieval Europe was the cradle of today's Western civilization, this work by consequence is vital for understanding our world and how it came into being.
Saint Augustine is often regardarded as the most influential Christian thinker after Saint Paul, and City of God is his materpiece, a cast synthesis of religious and secular knowledge. It began as a reply to the charge that Christian otherworldiness was causing the decline of the Roman Empire. Augustine produced a wealth of evidence to prove that paganism bore within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Then he proceeded to his larger theme, a cosmic interpretation of in terms of the struggle between good and evilL the City of God in conflict with the Earthly City or the City of the Devil. This, the first serious attempt at a philosophy of history, was to have incalculable influence in forming the Western mind on the relations of church and state, and on the Christian's place in the temporal order.
The original City of God contained twenty-two books and filles three regular-sized volumes. This edition has been skillfully abridged for the intelligent general reader by Vernon J. Bourke, author of Augustine's Quest for Wisdom, making the heart of this monumental work available to a wide audience.
Über den Autor Augustine
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St Augustine of Hippo was the great Doctor of the Latin Church. Born in North Africa in AD 354, he was brought up as a Christian and at 16 went to Carthage to finish his education. Until 387, Augustine followed the Manichean religion and founded his own school of rhetoric in Rome. After his baptism, he returned to Africa and lived in the community he formed there until his death in 430. His written output there includes Confessions and City of God, among over 113 books. Henry Bettenson (1908-1979) was educated at Bristol University and Oriel College, Oxford. He taught Classics for 25 years at Charterhouse 'Documents of the Christian Church' and 'Early Christian Fathers'. Dr Gill Evans teaches medieval intellectual history, medieval theology and ecumenical theology in the Faculty of History at Cambridge. She has published widely in this area.
