Saint Augustine’s City of God
A reference guide on the Creation — and a design book for the ideal communal relationship based on a religious moral compass
One losing home, wanders, faithfully accompanied by books in different format. They inspire, educate and take away. And so with this carousel of spiritual levers I’ve travelled the earth.
While on a visit to discover the strata of cultural impressions in architecture, sculpture and visual arts: frescos, icons and paintings of proto and Renaissance periods in Tuscany — one has to scale the monument of a different kind: literature — to decipher meaning behind an illustrious facade.
One borrows from plethora of written works: Classical philosophy, early Christian works, scholastic treateses and then those written by humanists.
Seeking the meaning of present, one borrows from rites and revolutions in the past: seeing patterns and rhymes: so Augustine’s “City of God” is a monumental piece and an important philosophical work from the early 5th century AD, narrating the demise of Rome due to absense of moral compass, that is imposed by the Christian God an delving in the origins of men and the rite of passage to eternal salvation.
These Old Testament’s themes we often see in the depiction of medieval frescos — warning men during strife and hunger or disease to follow the scriptures of pure being. It explains the nature of the original sin, the significance of angels and the path to eternal life for those keeping their souls open to God.
God being the “omnipotent creator of every soul and every body”, commands to live a life of piety, fortitute and observe the rites of the Bible — in contrast with moral depravity of Greek and Roman gods.
While borrowing on classical texts about “a good citizen” from Quintillian (1 century AD) and the requirement of citizens bound by a social contract with a polity they inhabit — to participate in communal affairs — he criticizes (alluding to events depicted by Sallustius (1 century BC) about the demise of democratic / republican ways that elevated citizens to take up high posts — since Rome was accelerating towards “deified dictatorship”: the Sulla wars of 82BC and the “election” of emperors ossified the political structure.
The fast forming cult of the emperor made corruption endemic: Pliny panegiric to Trajan, comparing him to Jupiter led to the impossibility to even obliquely criticise the state represented in one human body.
Bureaucracy increasingly became populated by favourites vs. chosen — and criticism was strictly formidden. And gods were of no help, as their depiction largely copied the sinful behaviour of their believers: these were the frolicking mischievous gods.
Augustine reimagined the social contract — best presented in writings of Cicero (1 century BC) on different entitlements in terms of virtue within their societies — subgugating the moral life of one — and many — to the observing of the moral rites of Christian religion. In a way he presented a scheme for a “paradise on earth”.
The quest for moral compass, reprehension against sinful and immoral tyrany, the idealised pure relationship of body and soul (devoid of conflict), man and woman (devoid of lust), men and their ruler (devoid of sin) we then see in numerous early Renaissance representations of different kind.
