The City of God

"A terrible rumour," wrote Jerome in 410 AD, "reaches me from the West, telling of Rome besieged, bought for gold, besieged again, life and property perishing together. My voice falters, sobs stifle the words I dictate; for she is a captive, that city which enthralled the world..." After the world-shattering sack of Rome by the Visigoths, St. Augustine seeks, in his magnum opus, to explain not only why Rome had fallen, but why humanity should eventually turn from hoping in a temporal city to hoping in an eternal one, De civitate Dei, the City of God. In this first volume, books I-III, Augustine pushes back against the pagans who claim that Rome has fallen as a result of the rise of the Christian religion and the subsequent neglect of the traditional pagan gods. Augustine argues convincingly that these gods, whatever they be, did not protect Rome even when she was entrusted to them, and that the Christian religion had provided protection for Romans who were on the brink of survival during the blood raid.