neiieren Geschichte, Miinchen und Berlin, 1925, p. 33.
INTRODUCTION
Dicant nobis Christiani quid boni attulit Christus unde feliciores patent res humanas, quia venit Christus? ^
The political ideas of St. Augustine, no less than his ideas on sin, grace, and predestination, have long been an object of controversy. Was the great African bishop a political pessimist^a "precursor" of Machiavelh, as Friedrich Meinecke suggests in his Die Idee der Staatsrdson?^ Or was he a prophetic Utopian—the chief source of "that ideal of a world society which is haunting the minds of so many today," as fitienne Gilson asserts in his preface to The City of God and attempts to demonstrate in Les Metamorphoses de la Cite de Dieu? ^ Readers of this volume may explore for themselves the possible meanings of the Augustinian writings upon which the controversy turns.
The works in which St. Augustine defines his political thought were almost without exception provoked by religious controversy, social upheavals, or military disasters. Some were replies to the Manichaeans of his day, who still ranted
1. Enarrationes in Psalmos, CXXXVI (Lat.), 9.
2. Friedrich Meinecke, Die Idee der Staatsrdson in der neiieren Geschichte, Miinchen und Berlin, 1925, p. 33.
3. Etienne Gilson, foreword to the Fathers of the Church edition of The City of God, New York, 1950, Vol. I, p. xi; Les metamorphoses de la Cite de Dieu, Louvain, 1952, passim.