City of God

Author: Augustine
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2003-05-01
Features: This is the first new rendition for a generation of The City of God. The first major intellectual achievement of Latin Christianity and one of the classic texts of Western civilization. When he began to write The City of God in 413, St. Augustine's intention was to defend the Christian Church against the charge of having brought about the Sack of Rome in 410. From this initial purpose, the work evolved into a detailed critique of the political and moral tradition of Rome and a synthesis of Platonism and Christianity, which must stand as one of the most significant achievements in Western intellectual history. Apart from its intrinsic interest, the Christian account of social and political relations which Augustine gives was to furnish one of the most fertile sources of material for the controversial literature in the Middle Ages. R. W. Dyson has produced a complete, accurate, authoritative, and fluent translation of The City of God, edited together with full biographical notes, a concise introduction, bibliographical note, and chronology of Augustine's life. The result is one of the most important single contributions yet published to the Cambridge Texts series, of interest to students of ecclesiastical history, the history of political thought, theology, philosophy, and late antiquity.