LIST OF DATES OF EVENTS
community at Thagaste, but he was permitted to found a new monastery near Hippo. In 396 he was consecrated assistant bishop of Hippo to aid the aged Valerius who died a year later. The care of the diocese now fell upon Augustine-and was to occupy him fully for the rest of his life. Besides his pastoral work Augustine was a powerful adversary of all heretics and enemies of the Church. Much of his prodigious literary output was devoted to this cause, but the importance of the Confessions (Confessiones), written in 397-8, is as a personal document and statement of faith. In 410 came the sack of Rome by Alaric and the Goths. This was the occasion which inspired Augustine to write City of God (De civitate Dei), his great work in twenty-two books, begun in 413 and completed in 426. The fall of the city after a thousand years, during which no foreign invader had penetrated its walls, was attributed by many to loss of faith in the pagan gods, whose cult had recently been largely suppressed by the joint emperors Gratian and Theodosius. The disaster was hailed as a direct consequence of the spread of Christianity, and this was a challenge which Augustine could not ignore. Mter disproving the claim that the prosperity of man depended upon the propitiation of a miscellaneous array of gods, he went on to define the Christian answer to the religious, philosophical, and political problems of the world and its government. The Confessions and the City of God rightly belong to the great literature of the world. Augustine's numerous other works are read chiefly by theologians and scholars. In addition to a great many letters and sermons, of which about five hundred have been preserved, he wrote books on theology and philosophy, controversial works against the Manichees, Donatists, and Pelagians, and works of biblical- exegesis. In 428 the Vandals invaded North Africa and Hippo was under siege from May 430 to July 431• In the fourth month of the siege, on 28 August 430, Augustine died. In 497, when the Arian king of the Vandals, Thrasamund, forced the bishops to leave Numidia, they carried Augustine's remains with them to Sardinia. The island was repeatedly raided by the Saracens in the eighth century and during the incursion of 721-2, to save the body from desecration, Liutprand, king of the Lombards, sent envoys to ransom it. They brought it to Pavia in northern Italy, where it was re-interred in the monastery of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro.
BOOK I
I
C any
praise be worthy of the Lord's majesty?l How magnificent his strength! How inscrutable his wisdoml 2 Man is one of your
AN
creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you. He bears about him the mark of death, the sign of his own sin, to remind him that you thwart the proud.s But still, since he is a part of your creation, he wishes to praise you. The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you. Grant me, Lord, to know and understand whether a man is first to pray to you for help or to praise you, and whether he must know you before he can call you to his aid. Ifhe does not know you, how can he pray to you? For he may call for some other help, mistaking it for yours. ' Or are men to pray to you and learn to know you through their prayers? Only, how are they to call upon the Lord until they have leamed
to believe in him? And how are they to believe in him without a preacher to listen to?' Those who look for the Lord will cry out in praise of him,li because
all who look for him shall fmd him, and when they find him they will praise him. I shall look for you, Lord, by praying to you and as I pray I shall believe in you, because we have had preachers to , tell us about you. It is my faith dlat calls to you, Lord, the faith which you gave me and made to live in me through the merits of your Son, who became man, and through the ministry of your preacher. , 1 Ps. 144: 3 (145: 3). In references to the Psalms the number according to the Vulgate is given first. This is followed by the Authorized Version number in brackets. IPs. 146: S (147: 5). 8 I Pet.. v. S. , Rom. 10: 14& PI. 21: 27 (22: 26).
21