Augustine lived and ministered during one of the most momentous periods of world history.

He died on 28th August AD 430, during the third month of the Vandals’ siege of the city of Hippo. As he died, meditating upon the Penitential Psalms and longing to see the King in His beauty, he was deeply aware of the pain and disorder that had descended upon the Roman world.

Twenty years earlier in AD 410 the unthinkable occurred when Alaric the Goth’s Arian armies sacked Christian Rome. The city which had proudly ruled the Mediterranean for a millennium has been breached. While a succession of Emperors had recognised the possibility of a sacking of Rome, and had already moved their courts away from the city, the symbolism of Alaric’s bold move was stark. The world was changing.

In response to the shifting geopolitical scene Augustine devoted a large part of his remaining years to one of his most influential works “The City of God”.

Put simply, Augustine portrayed the City of God as the community of God’s redeemed people, whose earthly expression is found in Christ’s Church. The world was changing, Rome was collapsing, mass migration was transforming the fabric of society but the Church of Christ would continue. Not only would the Church endure, but it would ultimately triumph, outlasting every earthly kingdom. Therefore Augustine interpreted the flow of history as gravitating around Christ and the progress of His Kingdom, as history moves towards the return of Christ and the eternal state:

‘Cain founded a city, whereas Abel, as a pilgrim, did not found one. For the City of the saints is up above, although it produces citizens here below, and in their persons the City is on pilgrimage until the time of its kingdom comes.’

Crowns and thrones may perish,
Kingdoms rise and wane,
But the Church of Jesus constant will remain”.
Sabine Baring-Gould