avcc un introduction et des notes par Pierre de Labriolle,
Viii INTRODUCTION against what they called the crimes, obscenities, calumnies, and absurdities of the Judaic Old
Testament. Others were intended for the correction of the heretical and ardently nationalistic
Donatists of North Africa, who were attacking orthodox Christian communities and rioting against the civil authorities. Still others, written after Alaric's frightful sack of Rome in 410 A.D., were answers to pagan charges that Christ's teachings are obviously "not adaptable to the customs of the state," and that great evils are bound to befall a people "when Christian rulers generally observe the Christian religion." *
In all these works, St. Augustine's concern is clearly practical rather than theoretical. Technically precise descriptions of governmental institutions and detailed comparisons of constitutional forms are conspicuously absent from his pages. Yet it by no means follows that we must, as
Pierre de LabrioUe recently suggested,^ deny him a political theory in the traditional sense of the term. On the contrary, if the reduction of empirical multiplicity to conceptual unity is the goal of theoretic science, St. Augustine's account of the political regime of the world—which is what he means by the term civitas terrena—must be considered a masterpiece of political theory. His primary object, as a Christian bishop and apologist, was no doubt to determine the will and ultimately the conduct of his readers. But he had first to inform the intellect. And to the accomphshment of that distinctly theoretical task he brought a mastery of philosophical discourse and
4. Epistolae, CXXXVI, 2.
5. La Citi de Dieu, text latin ct traduction frangaise, avcc un introduction et des notes par Pierre de Labriolle, Paris, 1957, Vol. I, pp. xi-xv.
INTRODUCTION IX a depth of psychological insight unsurpassed in the Western World.
From a juridical point of view it may be said, therefore, that St. Augustine's political doctrine has two aspects, one descriptive, or theoretical, the other censorial, or corrective. It is descriptive when the object is to trace the fixed pattern of an inviolable law—empirically ascertainable, like the laws of planetary motions—operating in the sphere of human conduct. It is censorial when it considers the obligations imposed by the various normative laws—natural, divine, and human —that men "ought" to obey, but which they often violate, without, however, in the least disturbing the operation of the fixed higher law that eternally governs "things as they are." Because of its intimate association with the doctrine of predestination, this distinction between the normative natural, divine, and human laws and the non-normative eternal law has disturbed many students of Augustinian thought. Yet, despite its diflficult moral and theological implications, St. Augustine considered it so indispensable a part of his political teaching that he insisted upon it even in sermons addressed to popular audiences. In Sermon CXXV, for instance, he says: "Let us not, because human affairs seem to be in disorder, fancy that there is no governance of human affairs. For all men are ordered to then* proper places; but to every man it seems as though they have no order." To illustrate his meaning he offers two simple analogies. "Look," he says, "at a painter. Before him are placed various colours, and he knows where to set each colour on." The sinner, he explains, has no doubt chosen to be the black color. But that does not