City of God (Penguin Classics) (44 page)
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Authors: Saint Augustine
24.
The true felicity of Christian emperors
When we describe certain Christian emperors as ‘happy’, it is not because they enjoyed long reigns, or because they died a peaceful death, leaving the throne to their sons; nor is it because they subdued their country’s enemies, or had the power to forestall insurrections by enemies in their own land and to suppress such insurrections if they arose. All these, and other similar rewards or consolations in this life of trouble were granted to some of the worshippers of demons, as their due; and yet those pagan rulers have no connection with the Kingdom
of God, to which those Christian rulers belong. Their good fortune was due to the mercy of God; for it was God’s intention that those who believe in him should not demand such blessings from him as if they represented the highest good.
We Christians call rulers happy, if they rule with justice; if amid the voices of exalted praise and the reverent salutations of excessive humility, they are not inflated with pride, but remember that they are but men; if they put their power at the service of God’s majesty, to extend his worship far and wide; if they fear God, love him and worship him; if, more than their earthly kingdom, they love that realm where they do not fear to share the kingship; if they are slow to punish, but ready to pardon; if they take vengeance on wrong because of the necessity to direct and protect the state, and not to satisfy their personal animosity; if they grant pardon not to allow impunity to wrong-doing but in the hope of amendment of the wrong-doer; if, when they are obliged to take severe decisions, as must often happen, they compensate this with the gentleness of their mercy and the generosity of their benefits; if they restrain their self-indulgent appetites all the more because they are more free to gratify them, and prefer to have command over their lower desires than over any number of subject peoples; and if they do all this not for a burning desire for empty glory, but for the love of eternal blessedness; and if they do not fail to offer to their true God, as a sacrifice for their sins, the oblation of humility, compassion, and prayer.
It is Christian emperors of this kind whom we call happy; happy in hope, during this present life, and to be happy in reality hereafter, when what we wait for will have come to pass.
25.
The prosperity bestowed by God on Constantine, the Christian emperor
God, in his goodness, did not wish that those who believed he was to be worshipped for the sake of life eternal, should suppose that no one could attain to the highest stations and the kingdoms of this world unless he made his supplications to demons, on the ground that those evil spirits have great power in this sphere. And for that reason he heaped worldly gifts such as no one would have dared to hope for, on Constantine, who made no supplication to demons, but worshipped only the true God. And God even granted him the honour of founding a city,
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associated with the Roman Empire, the daughter, one might
say, of Rome herself, but a city which contained not a single temple or image of any demon. Constantine had a long reign,
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and as the sole Augustus he ruled and defended the whole Roman world; he was victorious, above all others, in the wars which he directed and conducted; fortune favoured his efforts in the repression of usurpers;
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and he died of sickness and old age after a long life, leaving the throne to his sons.
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On the other hand, so that no emperor should become a Christian in order to earn the good fortune of Constantine (whereas it is only with a view to life eternal that anyone should be a Christian), God removed Jovian
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more quickly than Julian
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; he allowed Gratian
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to be slain by the usurper’s sword – but in far less painful circumstances than attended the murder of the great Pompey, who worshipped the pretended gods of Rome. For Pompey could not be avenged by Cato,
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whom he had, as it were, made his heir to the Civil War; while Gratian was avenged by Theodosius – although pious souls do not look for such consolation – whom Gratian had taken as a partner in his rule, although he had a young brother. Gratian was more concerned to have a trustworthy associate than to enjoy excessive power.
26.
The faith and devotion of the Emperor Theodosius
Thus Theodosius kept faith with Gratian not only in life, but after his death. The young brother of Gratian, Valentinian, had been driven out by Maximus, his murderer. Theodosius, like a true Christian, brought him back to his part of the Empire, as his ward. He looked after him with fatherly affection. Valentinian had been deprived of all his resources; and Theodosius would have been able to remove him without trouble, if his burning passion had been the desire for an enlarged dominion rather than the love of doing good. As it was, he
took the boy into his care, preserved his imperial standing, and consoled him with his kindness and his favour. Later, when his great success had rendered Maximus formidable, Theodosius, for all his pressing anxieties, did not lapse into blasphemous and forbidden superstitions. He sent a message to John, who had settled as a hermit in Egypt, of whose increasing reputation he had heard, for John was regarded as a servant of God, endowed with the spirit of prophecy; and from the prophet he received a definite assurance of victory. Soon afterwards, when he had got rid of Maximus,
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Theodosius restored the boy Valentinian, with respectful compassion, to his share in the Empire, from which he had been driven. Before long, Valentinian was destroyed, whether by an ambush, or some other plot, or by accident, and another usurper, Eugenius, was illegally put in his place. Theodosius suppressed him, in secure confidence in another prophetic reply he had received; and it was more by the power of prayer than by force of arms that he fought against the redoubtable forces of the usurper. Soldiers who took part in the battle have told us that the javelins were wrenched from their hands as they aimed them, when a violent wind blew from the side of Theodosius towards the enemy and not only whirled away with the utmost rapidity the missiles discharged against the emperor’s forces, but even turned them back on to the bodies of the foe. This suggested to the poet Claudian (who was far from being a Christian) those lines in praise of Theodosius:
O dearly loved of God, the sky fights for thee,
And winds in league come at the trumpet’s call.
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After victory had confirmed his confidence and his prediction, Theodosius cast down the images of Jupiter which had been supposedly consecrated against him by some kind of ceremonies and set up in the Alps. Those statues held golden thunderbolts; and when the emperor’s couriers felt able, in the joy of victory, to turn those weapons into a joke, saying that they would like to be struck by thunderbolts of that kind, Theodosius was delighted and kindly gave them to the jesters as a present.
The sons of his enemies had been carried off, not by his order, but in the tumult of war; and, though they were not Christians, they took refuge in the Church. Theodosius wished them to become Christians, since the occasion thus offered; and he loved them with Christian charity. He did not deprive them of their property; in fact he heaped honours on them; and he never allowed victory to be followed by the
satisfaction of private feuds. Men like Cinna, Marius, and Sulla wished the civil strife to continue when the wars were ended. Very different was Theodosius; far from wanting any harm to come to anyone after the end of civil war, he was deeply grieved that such conflicts should ever break out. Among all these anxieties Theodosius, from the beginning of his reign, never relaxed his endeavours to help the Church against the ungodly by just and compassionate legislation; and the Church at the time was in difficulties, for the heretic Valens
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had dealt her heavy blows in his support of the Arians. Theodosius was more glad to be a member of that Church than to be ruler of the world. He ordered the demolition of pagan images, knowing that even this world’s prizes are not in the gift of demons, but in the power of the true God.
But nothing could be more wonderful than the religious humility he showed after the grievous crime committed by the people of Thessalonica.
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On the intercession of the bishops he had promised a pardon; but then the clamour of certain of his close supporters drove him to avenge the crime. But he was constrained by the discipline of the Church to do penance in such a fashion that the people of Thessalonica, as they prayed for him, wept at seeing the imperial highness thus prostrate, with an emotion stronger than their fears of the emperor’s wrath at their offence. These and other good works of like nature, which it would take too long to recount, Theodosius took with him when he left the loftiest summit of power – which is nothing but a passing mist.
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The reward of those works is eternal happiness; God is the giver; and the only recipients are the truly devout. But all the rest that this world offers, whether the peaks of power or the bare necessities of life, God dispenses freely to good and evil alike – just as he gives to all alike the world the light, the air, earth and water and the fruits of earth, and man’s soul, body, senses, intelligence, and life. Among those gifts is dominion, of whatever extent; and this God bestows in accordance with his government of temporal affairs.
Our opponents have now been refuted and convicted of error by the irresistible evidence which proves that all the multitude of false gods is of no help towards the attainment of those temporal goods, which
are the sole objects of desire for the fools. But I am aware that I must go on to answer those who now try to assert that the gods are to be worshipped, not with a view to advantage in this present life, but for the sake of that life which is to come after death.
I think I have given a sufficient answer, in these five books, to those who wish to worship those inanities, because of their love of this world, and who now complain, with childish indignation, that this worship is not allowed. After I had published the first three books, and they began to be widely circulated, I heard that some people were preparing to write some kind of a reply. Then I received information that this reply had been written, but the authors were looking for a suitable occasion to publish it without danger to themselves. I hereby warn them not to wish for something which is not for their own good. It is easy for anyone to imagine that he has made a reply, when he has refused to keep silence. Is anything more loquacious than folly? But it must not be supposed that folly is as powerful as truth, just because it can, if it likes, shout louder and longer than truth.
Let them consider the whole matter carefully. Perhaps if they weigh things up without partiality or prejudice, they may perceive that there are some arguments which can be attacked, but not refuted, by an impudent prattle of words, like the buffoonery of satires and mimes. If they realize this, I hope they may put a check on their frivolity, and choose to be corrected by the wise rather than win the applause of the irresponsible. If by ‘looking for a suitable occasion’ they mean, not the chance to tell the truth, but the freedom to slander, then may heaven shield them from the fate of the man who was called ‘lucky’ because he had licence to do wrong; the man of whom Cicero says, ‘Unhappy man! He was given licence to sin!’
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A man may count himself happy in having licence to slander; but he will be far happier if deprived entirely of that liberty. Then he can drop the silly pose of superiority and take the opportunity to raise what objection he likes, as one really interested in getting to know; he can ask his questions in a spirit of friendly discussion, and listen when those whom he consults do their best to give a courteous, serious, and frank reply.
T
HE
argument of my first five books has, I believe, given a sufficient refutation of those who suppose that many false gods are to be venerated and worshipped for advantages in this mortal life and for benefits in temporal things. They would accord them the ceremonies and the humble devotion which the Greeks call
latreia
,
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a worship due only to the one true God. Christian truth proves those ‘gods’ to be useless images or unclean spirits and malignant demons, creatures at any rate, and not the Creator.
To be sure, those five books are not enough to deal with all the extravagant folly and perversity of our opponents – nor would any number of additional books suffice. That is clear to all. Stupidity glories in never yielding to the force of truth; that is how it effects the ruin of anyone who is under the dominion of this monstrous moral fault. It is a disease proof against all efforts to treat it, not through any fault in the physician, but because the patient is himself incurable. But those who understand what they read, who reflect upon it and weigh the arguments without any obstinate adherence to their old errors, or at least without excessive and exaggerated attachment to them – such people will be ready to conclude that in the five books already completed out discussion has been more, not less, than the question demanded. The ignorant try to bring odium on the Christian religion in connection with the disasters to which human life is subject, and the calamities and catastrophes that beset human affairs; and the learned not merely connive at this but even support those slanders, in defiance of their own conscience, possessed by a raging madness of blasphemy. These judicious readers cannot doubt that such attempts are utterly devoid of any clear thinking or right reasoning and are composed of nothing but irresponsible frivolity and malignant spite.