Augustine of Hippo’s Politics of Ordered Love. Order as a Key to the Political Perspectives Developed in De Ciuitate Dei

The sack of Rome by Alaric's Visigoths in 410 had huge symbolic significance. Many Christians, who conflated the fate of the Christianised Roman state with the fate of the Church, feared that the fall of Rome would also have an impact on the future of the Church. Pagan critics suggested that the city had been taken because the pagan rites that had once protected the city and the empire were no longer being observed, and because the spread of Christian ethics had weakened Rome's traditional virtues. Augustine (354-430) responded to these concerns in his De ciuitate Dei, in which he elaborated elements of political theory, based on the contrast between the perfect order of creation and the imperfect order of the world, and the human dealings with it. This project investigates the occurrence of different aspects of order and disorder in De ciuitate Dei  and brings them into dialogue with each other, in order to arrive at a better understanding of Augustine's thinking on politics.