Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
more worthy of human dignity, if he acknowledged this necessity is wretched, if he hated his role in it, and, if he is godly, in crying out to God: "Deliver me from my necessities" (Ps 24:17).61
War and Peace
Augustine has been called the architect of "just war" theory. This is not really accurate. His reflections were but one touchstone for the medieval theorists who actually formulated the theory.62 Herbert Deane once summarized Augustine's views this way: "In none of Augustine's writings on the subject of war can we find a trace of militarism or of glorification of the struggles that states and groups wage against each other with so much ferocity. Almost every one of his references to civil or international war is bitterly sorrowful; he always remembers the suffering and misery that war brings in its wake, especially for its innocent victims. . . . His own experiences and the age of plundering and slaughter in which he lived left him with a deep hatred of war and a great scorn for those who thought that conquest and military victories were glorious and noble accomplishments."63 The following passage comes after Augustine's reflections on the diversity of language and the divisions that this causes; he reflects here on the violence that underlay the now peaceful channels of communication that the peace of the Roman Empire made possible. From On the City of God, Book 19:
(7) It will be answered that the Roman Empire, in the interests of peaceful collaboration, imposes on nations it has conquered the yoke of both law and language, and thus has an adequate, or even an overflowing, abundance of interpreters. True enough. But at what cost! There is one war after another, havoc everywhere, tremendous slaughterings of human beings. All this for peace. Yet when the wars are waged, there are new calamities brewing. To begin with, there never has been, nor is there today, any absence of hostile foreign powers to provoke war. What is worse, the very development of the Empire accruing from their incorporation has begotten still worse wars within. I refer to the civil wars and social uprisings that involve even more wretched anxieties for human beings, either shaken by their actual impact or living in fear of their renewal. Massacres, frequent and sweeping, hardships too dire
61. Civ. Dei 19.6 (CCL 48:670–71); trans. Walsh and Honan, FOTC 24:204–5. 62. On Augustine's influence on medieval theorists, see Jonathan Barnes, "The Just War," in Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Late Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 771–84. For an overview of Augustine's own views, see Robert A. Markus, "Saint Augustine's Views on the 'Just War,' " Studies in Church History 20 (1983): 1–13; reprinted in Sacred and Secular: Studies on Augustine and Latin Christianity (London: Variorum, 1994).
63. Herbert Deane, The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 154.