Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
says nothing on this score, that all those points can be related to this same question, that at least to this extent it is evident that great evils befall the state when Christian rulers generally observe the Christian religion.
(3) Consequently, as your Beatitude is so good as to agree with me in recognizing that, as the much-desired answer of your Holiness to all this will pass through many hands, it should be full in appearance and carefully worked out, a brilliant solution; especially as the excellent landlord and ruler of the countryside of Hippo was present when these questions were raised, and he praised your Holiness with sarcastic flattery, insisting that he had not been at all satisfied when these queries were made. So then in the midst of all this, I do not forget your promise. I insist on it, and I ask for the completion of works which will be unbelievably useful to the Church, especially at this time.24
Publishing City of God
Firmus, a catechumen in Carthage, had once begged Augustine for a complete copy of City of God after hearing a public reading of Book 18.25 Augustine complied, sending him the manuscript not long after finishing it. In one of the Divjak letters, Augustine outlines, in broad terms, the 22 books that make up the completed work.26 This self-conscious outline is repeated both within City of God itself as well as in Reconsiderations and in other letters. 27 Here Augustine suggests how this outline should shape the publication, whether it should be bound as a two-volume or a five-volume work. The letter thus offers fascinating clues about the book business in the ancient world, about publishing, copying, binding, and dissemination. Note Augustine's stress that it be made available to pagans, also his stress that it not only be read, but re-read and meditated on. In certain medieval manuscripts, this letter was used as a preface to City of God. From Letter 1*A (Divjak):
(1) As I had promised, I have sent the books On the City of God for which you so earnestly entreated me. Indeed, I re-read them myself. . . . There are twenty-two books which are rather too bulky to be bound together into one volume. If you wish for two volumes, they must be divided up so that one volume has ten books, and the other, twelve. In the first ten, the vanities of the impious have been refuted, and in the other twelve, our religion has been de-
24. Ep. 136.1–3 (CSEL 44:93–96); trans. Parsons, FOTC 20:15–17 (modified). In ep. 135, Volusianus himself details specific concerns about the Incarnation. Augustine answers Volusianus in ep. 137 and Marcellinus in ep. 138. This correspondence forms a sort of first draft for the broader, more far-reaching rethinking of religion, history, and government played out in De civitate Dei.
25. Ep. 2*.3 (BA 46B:62). For the other letter to Firmus, see Chapter 3. 26. A slightly different version of this letter had been discovered by Cyrille Lambot and published in Revue Bénédictine 51 (1939): 109–21.
27. Similar outlines are found in civ. Dei 1.35–36, 10.32, and 18.1; they appear also in ep. 184A.3.5 and retr. 2.69.