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St. Augustine on Peace and War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2024

Hugh Pope O.P.
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‘If good people feel disgust at a nation which—simply with a view to extending its dominion—spontaneously provokes a war with neighbouring States which are at peace with it and have done them no harm—then I can only say that I applaud their praiseworthy feelings.’—De Civitate Dei, IV, xiv.

Remarkably little seems to have been written on this subject. Yet Augustine is quite justly described as the Father of the Philosophy of History,’ and even if he had not treated of the subject almost ‘ex professo ‘—as we hope to show—no remarks of his on the part war has played in the history of the world could fail to be of interest. So far the only discussion on his attitude to the problems are a Paper by Fr. Vincent Scully, C.R.L., in the Clergy Review for Feb., 1932, and also Ypres de la Brière, La Conception de la Paix et de la Guerre chez S. Augustin, Revue de la Philosophic, 1916. See too R. Regout, S.J., La doctrine de la guerre juste de S. Augustin ii nos jours d'apres les théologiens et les canonistes catholiques, 1935, though the author is more concerned with Franciscus de Victoria who has, he thinks, broken with scholastic teaching on the requisites for a just war.

The above passage—so peculiarly apropos to the events of to-day—shows us what the Bishop of Hippo’s reactions to the present crisis would have been. Yet to gentle, peace- loving Augustine, ever absorbed in the needs spiritual as well as temporal of his flock, war was-—as indeed it must be to every thinking man—-something unspeakably horrible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 21 , Issue 242 , May 1940 , pp. 290 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © 1940 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

1

Remarkably little seems to have been written on this subject. Yet Augustine is quite justly described as ‘the Father of the Philosophy of History,’ and even if he had not treated of the subject almost ‘ex professo’-as we hope to show-no remarks of his on the part war has played in the history of the world could fail to be of interest. So far the only discussion on his attitude to the problems are a Paper by Fr. Vincent Scully, C.R.L., in the Clergy Review for Feb., 1932, and also Ypres de la Brière, La Conception de la Paix et de la Guerre chez S. Augustin, Revve de la Philosophie, 1916. See too R. Regout, S.J., I.a doctrine de la guerre juste de S. Augustin à nos jours d'après les théologiens et les canonistes catholiques, 1935, though the author is more concerned with Franciscus de Victoria who has, he thinks, broken with scholastic teaching on the requisites for a just war.

References

2 De Civitate Dei, XIX, vii.

3 Ibid.

4 De Civitate Dei, IV, xv.

5 De Civitate Dei, I, xxxiii.

6 Adv . Haer, IV, xxx, 2.

7 Sermon, cv, 12; cf. Sermon, ccxvi, 6 ; Ep. xcix, to Italica.

8 De Civitate Dei, IV, vii.

9 see below.

10 De Ciaitate Dei, I, xv, xxiv, III, xviii, i, V, xviii, 2 ; Ep. cxxv, 3.

11 Ep. cxxix, 2, to another soldier, Count Darius.

12 Augustine had sent him his De Baptismo Parvutlorum, Ep. cxxxix, 3, had answered his questions on the Old Law, Epp. cxxxvi and cxxxviii, also on his De Libero Arbitrio; he had also sent him his treatise De Gestis Pelagii, and had dedicated to him the De Civitate Dei, cf. the Praefatio.

13 See Epp. cxxviii-ix, cxxxiii-iv, cxxxix, and especially cli.

14 Patrol. Lat., XI, 1441.

15 Sermon, cxiv.

16 Ep. ClXXXV, A.D. 417.

17 Ep. clxxxix, c. A.D. 418.

18 Ep. ccxx, at the close of AD. 427.

19 See Pallu de Lessert, Vicaires d’Afriqutes, ii 281 ff., also Fastes des Provinces Africaines, ii, 281.

20 De Ciritate Dei, III, xvii, 3.

21 Ibid., V, xviii, I .

22 Victor of Vita gives terrible account of them in his De Persecutione Vandalica.

23 Possidius, Vita Augustini, cap. xxviii.

24 I hope that, if God in His mercy permits it, I may be able by my studies to be of some profit even to posterity,’ Ep. cli, 13, to Caecilianus, A.D. 413-14, shortly after the murder of Marcellinus ; see many similar allusions to the way in which his writings were eagerly read, Epp. cii, I , cxix-cxx, clxix, 13, &c.

25 Ep. cxxxvi, 3.

26 Ep, cxxxviii, 15.

27 Ep. cxxxviii, 15.

28 Confessions, V, xiii, 23.

29 Contra Faustum, i , I ; cf. Comèts, La doctrine politique de S . Augustin, 1922, p. 267.

30 Ibid., i, 5-8.

31 Ibid., i, I .

32 Ibid., xxii, I and 73.

33 Ibid., xxii, 69.

34 Contra Fausturn, xxii, 74.

35 Ibid., 75.

36 Contra Faristztnt, v, 2.

37 Ibid., xxii, 74.

38 De Civitate Dei, IV, xiv.

39 Ibid., XIX, vii.

40 Ibid.