The first comprehensive modern guide to reading this key text.
Explains background and historical context.

The City of God is the most influential of Augustine`s works, which played a decisive role in the formation of the Christian West. This book is the first comprehensive modern guide to it in any language.

The City of God `s scope embodies cosmology, psychology, political thought, anti-pagan polemic, Christian apologetic, theory of history, biblical interpretation, and apocalyptic themes. This book is, therefore, at once about a single masterpiece and at the same time surveys Augustine`s developing views through the whole range of his thought. The book is written in the form of a detailed running commentary on each part of the work. Further chapters elucidate the early fifth-century political, social, historical, and literary background, the work`s sources, and its place in Augustine`s writings.The book should prove of value to Augustine`s wide readership among students of late antiquity, theologians, philosophers, medievalists, Renaissance scholars, and historians of art and iconography.