Written during the time when the Roman Empire was crumbling, Augustine's De civitate Dei tackles the questions raised by the decline of the political and social order. Here, in Books One through Seven (of the total of twenty-two books in this monumental work), Augustine examines the history of the Roman Republic and Empire. Though based on a false religion and a lust for domination, the rise of Rome was nevertheless ordained by God's providence.

This volume continues the translation of St. Augustine's monumental work The City of God, a product of his vast erudition. Three books in particular, viz. 8, 9, and 10, reveal Augustine's grasp of the tenets of the Platonists, Peripatetics and Cynics. The greater part of this continuation, however, is concerned with Augustine's treatment of theological and scriptural topics. There is no strictly logical sequence, however, and numerous digressions intervene. In the course of books 11 and 16, he finds occasion to discuss, among many other topics, the creation of angels and their nature, demons and evils, the age of the earth and of the human race, death and dying, and the purpose of marriage. From the discussion of such topics, he passes easily to comments on the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible, the accuracy of the Septuagint and Latin translations, the discrepancies among various texts. As a product of his times, Augustine shares the opinion that Hebrew may be the oldest, and perhaps most common, language before the Tower of Babel incident recorded in Scripture. Most of Augustine's treatment of scriptural passages is concerned with allegorical interpretation. In book 14, however, the former professor of rhetoric at milan comes through again in his discussion of the semantics of the words caritas, amor, dilago, and amo

This volume contains the translation of the six concluding books of The City of God. Book 17 briefly reviews significant events in the history of the chosen people down to the birth of Christ and calls attention to the prophecies that are fulfilled in Christ In summarizing the contents of the first 17 books Augustine shows in book 18 that there is a unifying theme running through the voluminous work: a comparison in the origin, development and progress of the earthly city and the city of God. A synchronizing of events in Jewish history with those in secular history brings this book to a close. Book 19 begins with a discussion of philosophical questions, e.g., the definition of the supreme good and the conditions for a just war, and concludes with an explanation of the differences between the earthly city and God's city and refutation of Porphyry's attacks on Christianity. Augustine himself says that he plans to discuss in book 20 the day of final judgment and to defend its reality against those who deliberately disbelieve in it. This purpose involves a consideration of Antichrist, the coming of Elias before the great and dreadful day of the Lord, the millennium mentioned in the book of Revelations, the new heaven and the new earth. The second last book discusses in some detail the kind of punishment that the Devil and those belonging to the earthly city are to endure. Reflections on hell, the nature of eternal torments and the unquenchable fire where the worm does not die bring this book to a close. The last book, book 22, treats the eternal blessedness of the city of God

Augustine, perhaps the most important and most widely read Father of the Church, first became preoccupied with the problem of evil in his boyhood, and this preoccupation continued throughout his life. Augustine's ideas about evil were to mark out the boundaries of the problem for those who came after him; his influence was greater and more widespread than any other early Christian thinker and is still of importance both with those who agree with him and with those who do not. Augustine's personality, so loveably and intricately revealed in his Confessions, has always made him a figure of intense interest.

Today the Byzantine mystic, writer, and monastic leader Symeon the New Theologian (ca. 949 to 1022 ce) is considered a saint by the Orthodox Church and revered as one of its most influential spiritual thinkers. But in his own time a cloud of controversy surrounded him and the suspicion of heresy tainted his reputation long afterward. The Life was written more than thirty years after Symeon's death by his disciple and apologist the theologian Niketas Stethatos, who also edited all of Symeon's spiritual writings. An unusually valuable piece of Byzantine hagiography, it not only presents compelling descriptions of Symeon's visions, mystical inspiration, and role as a monastic founder, but also provides vivid glimpses into the often bitter and unpleasantly conflicted politics of monasticism and the construction of sanctity and orthodoxy at the zenith of the medieval Byzantine Empire. Although the many volumes of Symeon's spiritual writings are now readily available in English, the present translation makes the Life accessible to English readers for the first time. It is based on an authoritative edition of the Greek.

"Whoever needs an act of faith to elucidate an event that can be explained by reason is a fool, and unworthy of reasonable thought." This line, spoken by the notorious 18th-century libertine Giacomo Casanova, illustrates a deeply entrenched perception of religion, as prevalent today as it was hundreds of years ago. It is the sentiment behind the narrative that Catholic beliefs were incompatible with the Enlightenment ideals. Catholics, many claim, are superstitious and traditional, opposed to democracy and gender equality, and hostile to science. It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Casanova himself was a Catholic. In The Catholic Enlightenment, Ulrich L. Lehner points to such figures as representatives of a long-overlooked thread of a reform-minded Catholicism, which engaged Enlightenment ideals with as much fervor and intellectual gravity as anyone. Their story opens new pathways for understanding how faith and modernity can interact in our own time. Lehner begins two hundred years before the Enlightenment, when the Protestant Reformation destroyed the hegemony Catholicism had enjoyed for centuries. During this time the Catholic Church instituted several reforms, such as better education for pastors, more liberal ideas about the roles of women, and an emphasis on human freedom as a critical feature of theology. These actions formed the foundation of the Enlightenment's belief in individual freedom. While giants like Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire became some of the most influential voices of the time, Catholic Enlighteners were right alongside them. They denounced fanaticism, superstition, and prejudice as irreconcilable with the Enlightenment agenda. In 1789, the French Revolution dealt a devastating blow to their cause, disillusioning many Catholics against the idea of modernization. Popes accumulated ever more power and the Catholic Enlightenment was snuffed out. It was not until the Second Vatican Council in 1962 that questions of Catholicism's compatibility with modernity would be broached again. Ulrich L. Lehner tells, for the first time, the forgotten story of these reform-minded Catholics. As Pope Francis pushes the boundaries of Catholicism even further, and Catholics once again grapple with these questions, this book will prove to be required reading.

This book anchors its account of the beauty of Jesus Christ to a scheme found in St Augustine of Hippo's Expositions of the Psalms. There Augustine recognized the beauty of Christ at every stage-from his pre-existence ('beautiful in heaven'), through his incarnation, the public ministry ('beautiful in his miracles, beautiful in calling to life'), passion, crucifixion, burial, resurrection ('beautiful in taking up his life again'), and glorious life 'in heaven'. Augustine never filled out this laconic summary by writing a work on Christ and his beauty. The Beauty of Jesus Christ seems to be the first attempt in Christian history to write a comprehensive account of the beauty of Christ in the light of Augustine's list. The work begins by offering a working description of what it understands by beauty as being perfect, harmonious, and radiant. Beauty, above all the divine beauty, enjoys inexhaustible meaning and overlaps with 'the holy' or the awesome and fascinating mystery of God. Loving beauty opens the way to truth and helps us grasp and practise virtue. The books needs to add some items to Augustine's list by recognizing Christ's beauty in his baptism, transfiguration, and post-resurrection sending of the Holy Spirit. It also goes beyond Augustine by showing how the imagery and language Jesus prepared in his hidden life and then used in his ministry witness to the beautiful sensibility that developed during his years at home in Nazareth. Throughout, this book draws on the Scriptures to illustrate and justify Augustine's brief claims about the beauty revealed in the whole story of Christ, from his pre-existence to his risen 'post-existence'. Where appropriate, it also cites the witness to Christ's beauty that has come from artists, composers of sacred music, the creators of icons, and writers.

Beginning as a marginal group in Galilee, the movement initiated by Jesus of Nazareth became a world religion within 100 years. Why, among various religious movements, did Christianity succeed? This major work by internationally renowned scholar Udo Schnelle traces the historical, cultural, and theological influences and developments of the early years of the Christian movement. It shows how Christianity provided an intellectual framework, a literature, and socialization among converts that led to its enduring influence. Senior New Testament scholar James Thompson offers a clear, fluent English translation of the successful German edition.

This volume concludes the series of Peter Damian's Letters in English translation. Among Letters 151-180 readers will find some of Damian's most passionate exhortations on behalf of eremitic ideals. These include Letter 152, in which Damian defends as consistent with the spirit and the letter of Benedict's Rule his practice of receiving into the eremitic life monks who had abandoned their cenobitic communities. In Letter 153 Damian encourages monks at Pomposa to pass beyond the minimum standards established in the Rule of St. Benedict for the higher and more demanding eremitic vocation. In Letter 165, addressed to a hermit, Albizo, and a monk, Peter, Damian reveals as well the importance of monastic life to the world: because the integrity of the monastic profession has weakened, the world has fallen even deeper into an abyss of sin and corruption and is rushing headlong to destruction. Let monks and hermits take refuge within the walls of the monastery, he urges, while outside the advent of Antichrist seems imminent. Only from within their walls can they project proper examples of piety and sanctity that may transform the world as a whole. Damian was equally concerned to address the moral condition of the larger Church. Letter 162 represents the last of Damian's four tracts condemning clerical marriage (Nicolaitism). Damian's condemnation of Nicolaitism also informed his rejection of Cadalus, the antipope Honorius II (see Letters 154 and 156), who was said to support clerical marriage, and therefore cast him into the center of a storm of ecclesiastical (and imperial) politics from which Damian never completely extricated himself.

Using pagan fiction produced in Greek and Latin during the early Christian era, G. W. Bowersock investigates the complex relationship between "historical" and "fictional" truths. This relationship preoccupied writers of the second century, a time when apparent fictions about both past and present were proliferating at an astonishing rate and history was being invented all over again. With force and eloquence, Bowersock illuminates social attitudes of this period and persuasively argues that its fiction was influenced by the emerging Christian Gospel narratives. Enthralling in its breadth and enhanced by two erudite appendices, this is a book that will be warmly welcomed by historians and interpreters of literature. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Bede 'the Venerable, ' English theologian and historian, was born in 672 or 673 CE in the territory of the single monastery at Wearmouth and Jarrow. He was ordained deacon (691-2) and priest (702-3) of the monastery, where his whole life was spent in devotion, choral singing, study, teaching, discussion, and writing. Besides Latin he knew Greek and possibly Hebrew.

Bede's theological works were chiefly commentaries, mostly allegorical in method, based with acknowledgment on Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, and others, but bearing his own personality. In another class were works on grammar and one on natural phenomena; special interest in the vexed question of Easter led him to write about the calendar and chronology. But his most admired production is his "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation," Here a clear and simple style united with descriptive powers to produce an elegant work, and the facts diligently collected from good sources make it a valuable account. Historical also are his "Lives of the Abbots" of his monastery, the less successful accounts (in verse and prose) of Cuthbert, and the "Letter" (November 734) "to Egbert" his pupil, so important for our knowledge about the Church in Northumbria.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Bede's historical works is in two volumes.

This volume pulls together thirteen essays written by the author since the late 1970's which give a distinctive, coherent reading of Luke-Acts. Twelve of the essays focus on the theological perspectives of Luke and Acts as they can be discerned from the angle of vision of the "authorial audience" as delineated by the non-biblical literary critic, Peter J. Rabinowitz. The final essay focuses on the possible historical value of Acts and the methodology involved in judging that possibility.

What expectations did the women and men living in early monastic communities carry into relationships of obedience and advice? What did they hope to achieve through confession and discipline? To explore these questions, this study shows how several early Christian writers applied the logic, knowledge, and practices of Galenic medicine to develop their own practices of spiritual direction. Evagrius reads dream images as diagnostic indicators of the soul's state. John Cassian crafts a nosology of the soul using lists of passions while diagnosing the causes of wet dreams. Basil of Caesarea pits the spiritual director against the physician in a competition over diagnostic expertise. John Climacus crafts pathologies of passions through demonic family trees, while equipping his spiritual director with a physician's toolkit and imagining the monastic space as a vast clinic. These different appropriations of medical logic and metaphors not only show us the thought-world of late antique monasticism, but they would also have decisive consequences for generations of Christian subjects who would learn to see themselves as sick or well, patients or healers, within monastic communities.

The Akathistos Hymn, the most famous work of Byzantine hymnography, has been enshrined in the Orthodox liturgy since the year 626, and its image of the Virgin Mary has exerted a strong influence upon Marian poetry and literature. Anonymous, undated and highly rhetorical, the hymn has presented a challenge to scholars over the years.
This study has been undertaken by an innovative method. The approach brings new insights to the era which brought forth the hymn, and the metaphorical image of the Virgin becomes conceptually accessible to the modern-day reader. The investigation leads to the conclusion that the Council of Ephesus (431) constitutes the most likely historical context for the hymn's composition.
The book will be of value to all scholars of early Byzantine and Marian studies.

Tertullian is a primary source for a modern understanding of the issues that once confronted -- and still confront -- Christians living in a non-Christian world. Unfortunately, his writings have often been cast aside as too difficult to read. In this volume, Robert D. Sider undertakes a judicious pruning of the original texts and brings a fresh accessibility to the important writings of Tertullian.

Band 9 der zweisprachigen Ausgabe der Sermones ad populum bietet die erstmalige deutsche UEbersetzung der drei Predigten zur Apostelgeschichte 148-150. Die lateinischen Texte beruhen auf dem Vergleich der bisherigen Editionen, im Fall von sermo 150 auch auf Codex I 9 der Stadtbibliothek Mainz, der als Faksimile abgedruckt wird. Die Kommentierung erlautert insbesondere UEberlieferung, Chronologie, Struktur, Stil, historische Daten, biblisches Gedankengut, Liturgie und Theologie der Predigten. Daruber hinaus werden hagiographische und archaologische Daten sowie die Verwendung der Apostelgeschichte im Gesamtwerk Augustins dargestellt.

Inspired by analogies betwen the construction of heresy and the representation of madness described by Michael Foucault in in Histoire de la folie a l'age classique (Madness and Civilization), The Notion of Heresy in Greek Literature in the Second and Third Centuries demonstrates how the concept of heresy emerges in the work of Justin Matyr. It shows that this invention created a concept capable of dominating every current suspected of endangering ecclesial harmony, and transformed the tradition of Greek historiography of philosophical schools by combining it with the apocalyptic theme of diabolical conspiracy. Le Boulluec examines how this model is refined by Irenaeus, then modified by Clement of Alexandria and Origen. First published in 1985 as d'heresie dans la litterature grecque (IIe-IIIesiecles), this newly translated work includes a substantial new introduction surveying literature in the previous decades. In line wth Walter Bauer's pioneering book, which overturned the confessional model making heresy a later falsification of orthodoxy, it shows that the notion of heresy was invented in the second century and then refined in order to remove all legitimacy from diversity and pluralism in the fields of doctrine and practice. Le Boulluec studies rhetorical practices and polemical assimilations to highlight key debates on the relationship between philosophy, Christianity, and Judaism, and to examine the conflict of interpretations that drive the exegesis of the Bible in constructing an orthodoxy.

It was not until after the conversion of the English to Christianity that any sustained information was written down about Christian life in these islands. This was done in the eigth century by the monk Bede, and it is mostly through his writings that it is possible to be in touch with the first Christians in England and to know about what they thought and did. Ward looks at this "golden age" of English Christianity, how it ended with the attacks of the Vikings and the "golden age" of faith and culture which followed in the tenth century.

The literature of late ancient Christianity is rich both in saints who lead lives of almost Edenic health and in saints who court and endure horrifying diseases. In such narratives, health and illness might signify the sanctity of the ascetic, or invite consideration of a broader theology of illness. In "Thorns in the Flesh," Andrew Crislip draws on a wide range of texts from the fourth through sixth centuries that reflect persistent and contentious attempts to make sense of the illness of the ostensibly holy. These sources include Lives of Antony, Paul, Pachomius, and others; theological treatises by Basil of Caesarea and Evagrius of Pontus; and collections of correspondence from the period such as the Letters of Barsanuphius and John.Through close readings of these texts, Crislip shows how late ancient Christians complicated and critiqued hagiographical commonplaces and radically reinterpreted illness as a valuable mode for spiritual and ascetic practice. Illness need not point to sin or failure, he demonstrates, but might serve in itself as a potent form of spiritual practice that surpasses even the most strenuous of ascetic labors and opens up the sufferer to a more direct knowledge of the self and the divine. Crislip provides a fresh and nuanced look at the contentious and dynamic theology of illness that emerged in and around the ascetic and monastic cultures of the later Roman world.

This first volume of the penguin history of the church looks at the beginning of the Christian movement during the first centuries AD and at the explosive force of its expansion throughout the Roman world. Drawing on recent historical research, Professor Henry Chadwock shows how Christianity had its roots in a synthesis of contemporary ideas and beliefs, and analyses the causes of its persecution under Diocletian, the fanaticism of its martyrs and its bitter internal controversies. The conversion of Constantine and the edict of Theodosius meant that the church had to reconcile its spiritual duties with a new, worldly role as an established church for good government throughout the empire, and Professor Chadwick completes his history by demonstrating how this conflict of responsiblilties led to the emergence of the papacy and the monastic movement, the twin pillars of Christianity in the Middle Ages.

Sin was an extremely important and serious concern for the earliest Christians and the authors of the New Testament writings. Early Christians came to see the life and ministry of Jesus as challenging presumptions about the meanings of sin and faithfulness. This book provides a comprehensive treatment of different understandings of sin in early Christianity. Jeffrey S. Siker describes how the earliest Christian voices represented in the New Testament writings understood "sin" not only as a theological abstraction, but also as a real reflection upon human thought and behavior that violated right relationships with both other human beings and with God. Siker explores language about sin in relation to the Jewish and Greco-Roman contextual worlds of the New Testament writings, and examines the development and change of these worlds in relation to the modern concept of sin.

The volume contains five chapters which investigate the early Christian appropriations of Jewish apocalyptic material. An introductory chapter surveys ancient perceptions of the apocalyses as well as their function, authority, and survival in the early Church. The second chapter focuses on a specific tradition by exploring the status of the Enoch-literature, the use of the fallen-angel motif, and the identification of Enoch as an eschatological witness. Christian transmission of Jewish texts, a topic whose significance is more and more being recognized, is the subject of chapter three which analyzes what happend to 4,5 and 6 Ezra as they were copied and edited in Christian circles. Chapter four studies the early Christian appropriation and reinterpretation of Jewish apocalyptic chronologies, especially Daniel's vision of 70 weeks. The fifth and last chapter is devoted to the use and influence of Jewish apocalyptic traditions among Christian sectarian groups in Asia Minor and particularly in Egypt. Taken together these chapters written by four authors, offer illuminating examples of how Jewish apocalyptic texts and traditions fared in early Christianity. Editors James C. VanderKam is lecturing at the University of Notre Dame; William Adler is lecturer at North Carolina State University. Series: Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum Section 1 - The Jewish people in the first century Historial geography, political history, social, cultural and religious life and institutions Edited by S. Safrai and M. Stern in cooperation with D. Flusser and W.C. van Unnik Section 2 - The Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud Section 3 - JewishTraditions in Early Christian Literature

Augustinus (354430 CE), son of a pagan, Patricius of Tagaste in North Africa, and his Christian wife Monica, while studying in Africa to become a rhetorician, plunged into a turmoil of philosophical and psychological doubts in search of truth, joining for a time the Manichaean society. He became a teacher of grammar at Tagaste, and lived much under the influence of his mother and his friend Alypius. About 383 he went to Rome and soon after to Milan as a teacher of rhetoric, being now attracted by the philosophy of the Sceptics and of the Neo-Platonists. His studies of Paul's letters with Alypius and the preaching of Bishop Ambrose led in 386 to his rejection of all sensual habits and to his famous conversion from mixed beliefs to Christianity. He returned to Tagaste and there founded a religious community. In 395 or 396 he became Bishop of Hippo, and was henceforth engrossed with duties, writing and controversy. He died at Hippo during the successful siege by the Vandals.

From Augustine's large output the Loeb Classical Library offers that great autobiography the "Confessions" (in two volumes); "On the City of God" (seven volumes), which unfolds God's action in the progress of the world's history, and propounds the superiority of Christian beliefs over pagan in adversity; and a selection of "Letters" which are important for the study of ecclesiastical history and Augustine's relations with other theologians.

Series: Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum Section 1 - The Jewish people in the first century Historical geography, political history, social, cultural and religious life and institutions Edited by S. Safrai and M. Stern in cooperation with D. Flusser and W.C. van Unnik Section 2 - The Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud Section 3 - Jewish Traditions in Early Christian Literature