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31. Augustine and the Fall of the Roman West

Of all the Church Fathers, Augustine (A.D. 354-430) exercised the greatest influence on Christianity. In his youth in North Africa, he studied Classical literature and thought, including Neo-Platonism . . . During his lifetime, his writing came to represent the voice of Orthodox beliefs. . . . For many centuries, he was venerated by Christians as the supreme authority on nearly every major theological issue. (MP, 175176)

Early Life, Career, and Influences

Born in A.D. 354 to a Christian mother and pagan father (an imperial bureaucrat) Studied rhetoric in Carthage and then in Rome Taught in Italy Competing forces
Ambrose of Milan, most eloquent Christian of the day Symmachus (Prefect of the City), noted pagan and Classical thinker

Controversy between Ambrose and Symmachus regarding the Altar of Victory in Senate house

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St. Augustine and the Classical Tradition

He came to believe that his efforts to understand the world by studying Greco-Roman philosophy, literature, and religion affirmed his desire to search for lifes ultimate truths (MP, 176) Augustines major works, Confessions and City of God, are replete with references to and quotations from Classical literature

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31. Augustine and the Fall of the Roman West

Confessions
The Life of St. Augustine has a special appeal because he was a great sinner who became a great saint . . . R.S. PineCoffin Written in A.D. 397 A spiritual autobiography detailing Augustines search for intellectual and spiritual solace Meaning of the term confession
accusation of self (recognition of guilt) praise of God declaration of faith

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Problems of Autobiography
Audience Persona
Self as subject Self as narrator Self as protagonist

Beginning, ending, organization Augustines solutions:

addressed to God The saved Augustine narrates the life of the sinners life

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31. Augustine and the Fall of the Roman West

Issues and Objectives in Confessions

When St. Augustine wrote his Confessions, he was facing, and responding to, a growing spread of asceticism in the Roman world. (Penguin)
One heretical group, the Pelagians, asserted that one earned salvation through good works Augustine maintained that salvation came by Gods grace

Aimed to explain his conversion to an educated, Roman audience

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Summary of Incidents Early in Confessions

From Book I
Even as an infant and as a child, Augustines soul rebelled against God

From Book II
The Pear Tree: stole not because he was hungry, but just because it was wrong

From Book III

While a student at Carthage, the philosophy of Cicero in his treatise entitled Hortensius began to change his outlook and to turn him to God Following the normal order of study I had come to a book of one Cicero, whose tongue practically everyone admires, though not his heart. That particular book is called the Hortensius and contains an exhortation to philosophy. Quite definitely it changed the direction of my mind, altered my prayers to you, O Lord, and gave me new purpose and ambition . . . I had begun that journey upwards by which I was to return to you. Classical Philosophy (and later the religion on the Manicheans), however, did not afford him lasting peace
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Confessions VIII
The struggles between Augustines natural impulses on one hand and his desire to follow God tore him
This was the nature of my sickness. I was in torment, reproaching myself more bitterly . . . I was held back by mere trifles, the most paltry inanities, all my old attachments. They plucked at my garment of flesh and whispered, Are you going to dismiss us? From this moment we shall never be with you again, for ever and ever. From this moment you will never again be allowed to do this thing or that, for ever more.: (MP R, 167)

Augustines conversion: hearing a child singing and a voice saying take and read
This could only be a divine command to open my book of Scripture and read the first passage on which my eyes should fall . . . I seized it and read the first passage on which my eyes fell: Not reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and natures appetites. (MPR, 168) This passage, from Romans 13:13-14, converted Augustine to the concept of salvation through Gods grace

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City of God
Written A.D. 41326
Rome had recently been sacked by the Vandals (A.D. 410)

Problem of the decline of a Christian Rome

Pagans claimed that the old Roman gods had abandoned the empire because their worship had been neglected by the Christians. Christians were presented with a dilemma: why, when so much of the empire had turned to the true God, was it now apparently falling?

As a challenge to the Roman neo-paganism that threatened to overwhelm Christianity in the early fifth century, City of God embraces religious lore, philosophy, theology, and history (Penguin)

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31. Augustine and the Fall of the Roman West

Approach and Issues

Augustines great work, The City of God, is, in effect, his application of his personal spiritual journey in his Confessions to the history of mankind
The Christians true home is no earthly city but rather a Heavenly City. Church is the city of God on a pilgrimage below

Augustine accepted the idea of predestination and fate: the City of Man was destined to fall, the City of God destined for glory
Rome must fall so that the City of God could triumph! Augustine upset the Classical tension and balance between fate and agency

Structure
15, Roman polytheism/historical successes (excerpts in packet) 610, Greek philosophy 1122, Bible

All threeRoman speculation on religion, Greek philosophical inquiries, and the Bibleall point to the one true God.

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On Sallust and Romes Morality

Sallust: supposedly justice and morality prevailed among the Romans by nature as much as law (packet, 152)
Nevertheless, starting with the Rape of the Sabine women, Augustine cites example after example of Roman misbehavior I am sick of recalling the many acts of revolting injustice which have disturbed the citys history; the powerful classes did their best to subjugate the lower orders, and the lower orders resistedthe leaders of each side motivated more by ambition for victory than by any ideas of equity and morality. (packet, 153)

On the decline of the Roman character

Now the Romans do not dare to blame their gods for all the moral evils of these periods, either the venial sins of earlier times or the horrid and intolerable enormities that followed the fall of Carthage, though it was these gods who with malignant cunning implanted in human minds ideas which blossomed into such wickedness. Why then do they blame Christ for the present evils, when Christ by his saving doctrine forbids the worship of false and deceitful gods? (packet, 154)
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On the Roman Commonwealth

Cicero: a republic only exists where there is sound and just government (packet, 155-157)
Cicero himself admitted that justice had ceased to exist . . . he argues that the commonwealth is not only corrupt, but rather has ceased to exist at allfor there can be no weal of the community, if it is unjust (packet, 155)

True justice is only found in the state whose founder and ruler is Christ Now it certainly was a commonwealth to some degree, according to more plausible definitions; and it was better ruled by the Romans of antiquity than by their later successors. But true justice is found only in that commonwealth whose founder and ruler is Christ. (packet, 157)

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Moral Character of the Ancient Romans

Sallusts description of Cato and Caesar (packet, 160)
Cato had said that character, not arms, had made Rome great The virtues which Cato praised were only applicable to a very few: But the great things which were then achieved were accomplished through the administration of a few men, who were good in their own way. And by the wisdom and forethought of these few good men, which first enabled the republic to endure these evils and mitigated them, it waxed greater and greater. (packet, 154)

. . . Consider what virtues of the Romans there were which the true God condescended to help in order to raise the empire, and also for what reason He did so. (packet, 158)
it was not only for the sake of recompensing the citizens of Rome that her empire and glory had been so signally extended, but also that the citizens of that eternal city, during their pilgrimage here, might diligently and soberly contemplate these examples. (packet, 161)

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Was there ever a Republic?

A republic or commonwealth only existed when there was true justice According to Ciceros own definition, there never was a true republic because there never was true justice
The city of the ungodly, which did not obey the command of God that it should offer no sacrifice save to Him alone . . . is void of true justice. (packet, 164)

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Division of the Roman Empire

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Rome Falls but the Empire Goes On

Empire re-divided after the death of Theodosius (A.D. 375-95) German tribes are increasingly brought into the empire as mercenaries, settle as autonomous communities under their own kings A.D. 410, Alaric and Visgoths sack Rome German kings at first rule the Western Empire through Roman puppets but then in their own names
More-or-less last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, deposed in A.D. 476 In Italy the Roman senate and consuls continue for almost another century under Ostrogothic kings Franks, Visgoths, and others occupy the rest of the Roman West

Eastern empire continues until A.D. 1453

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Fall of the Western Empire, Persistence of the Eastern Empire

[Causes?]
Moral Collapse and Vice?
Careful here . . . This is a predominately Christian Empire

External pressures Yes, but the Germans are inside before the (Western) empire falls!
Augustines City of God and the dilemma of Christian political decline

Disease and plague Economic collapse

Exhaustion of land and minerals Tax base cannot support necessary military

Triumph of Barbarism and Religion (Gibbon) Dysgenic breeding, race suicide, upper classes decline (discredited) Government mismanagement and failure of frontier defense
Chief proximate cause Economic, disease, and external pressures combined to hasten the end

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