Catholic Thought discussion
City of God, St. Augustine
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When I looked into this last year I was bummed about it too. I really enjoyed her translation of 'Confessions.'
It is a little disappointing there aren't more translations out there. When you look at the The Illiad or The Odyssey scholars fall over themselves translating it yet again. It must be the signs of the times.
One can also read the book online through advent.org. , which is the Marcus Dods translation. www.newadvent.org/fathers/1201.htm
A bit of background, which I am sure I've mentioned before when we read the Church Fathers. Back in the 19th century a bunch of Protestant scholars translated the writings of the Church Fathers. These are the ones available in public domain. There are other translations, but not as accessible for the non-scholar. Since these translators were biased against the Catholic Church some of the translations are not reliable. Now, Kevin Knight of New Advent has the same translations but cleaned up. He mentioned as much on a podcast I listened to some time back and folks like Mike Aquilina confirm it. So these texts can be trusted.
My copy of The City of God is the Marcus Dods translation distributed by a Catholic publishing company, Catholic way Publishing. Not all the books within are Dods's translation, but upon further looking into it I can't tell if these are recent or not. Anyway, I would hope a Catholic publisher has a cleaned-up version.
We also have the Bettenson translation from Penguin. I'll post a paragraph comparison and we can see what we like better.
Dods translation is $8.49 on Kindle.
But also another $.99 version, also Dods, with illustrations and endnotes. Catholic Way publishers.
Mod
When I looked into this last year I was bummed about it too. I really enjoyed her translation of 'Confessions.'.."
Kerstin, I found out that Sr Mary Boulding's translations of Augustine were part of a New City Press effort to translate all of Augustine's works for the 21st century. William Babcock's translation of City of God was also part of that effort. It seems that Boulding took Confessions and Babcock took City of God. I don't know if that persuades you in which to choose, but it does me. I'm going to suck up the cost and go with the Babcock translation. I'll do it on Kindle though and save a little bit.
Mod
Any suggestions for an audiobook version from Audible in addition to the text?
Mod
Blake, welcome. Nice to have you with us and I hope you join in on the book read. As far as I can tell there were only two options for an audible, and they seemed about the same. I went with the one narrated by McCallion on an almost flip of a coin decision.
My Modern Library Dods translation paperback has an introduction by Thomas Merton (1915-1968) which he wrote in 1950 or earlier. It seems likely that this is the translation that Merton used. I wonder if that's a good indication of evaluating this translation now that I see above three later translations than what Merton had available which gives good reason to consider the others. Perhaps Merton read it in Latin?
Mod
Mod
Book 1: Week of January 5th
Book 2: Week of January 12th
Book 3: Week of January 19th
Book 4: Week of January 26th
Book 5: Week of February 2nd
Those are the weeks we read. Discussion, per our tradition, starts on the following week. So discussion of Book 1 will start on the week of January 12th. Discussion of Book 5 will conclude the week of February 9th. Hope you’re all up to it.
Interestingly Lent starts on February 26th. Our next read has already been determined going back to a year ago when three books nearly tied, so we decided to read all three in due course. The third book in that poll will be our next read, St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life. I think that will make a perfect Lenten read.
Manny wrote: "Our City of God read starts this Sunday! Let me propose a reading schedule. This is our long term read, so we do not expect to read this in one cycle. I don’t really know how fast it r..."Thank you Manny. That is a good plan. My solo reading of this great classic some three years ago was challenging. I am looking forward to gaining new takes on it from this group reading.
(If anyone still needs a free access to the old Dods translation text online there is one here:) https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102/...
I have the Dods translation and will start today. Manny can you give me the ISBN for the Babcock translation, in case the Dods does not appeal to me?
Celia,I'm reading the William Babcock translation paperbacks
Books 1-10 348 pgs (w/o intro) ISBN 978 1 56548 455 9
Books 11-22 554 pgs (w/o index) ISBN 978 1 56548 481 8
I pulled my old Penguine Classics version of this book off my shelf. I bought this decades ago and never read it. I found The Confessions sufficiently challenging and this one was so much longer. I never had the courage to tackle it. I read the introduction on Friday and am feeling very intimidated.
Mod
Irene, I'm intimidated too, and I'm supposed to moderate this discussion! For me Augustine's Confession was divided into two modes. The first ten chapters was straight forward and I understood pretty well. The last three chapters went completely over my head. I didn't get it at all. Now if City of God is more like the first ten chapters of Confession, then I'll breath a sigh of relief. If it's more like the last three chapters , then we are all in trouble...lol.
Together and with God's help, we'll find our way through. :)
Is LibriVox audiobook ok on this one? I’ve been taking notes.
Mod
I didn't even think of LibriVox. I would think so. I would imagine it's the Dods translation. Does it say?
Manny, My Introduction makes it sound like we are going to be given substantial philosophical content. I have virtually NO background in Greek or Roman philosophy.
Mod
Kerstin wrote: "Manny wrote: "Maria Boulding, an English Catholic nun, apparently translated many of St. Augustine’s works, but apparently not City of God."When I looked into this last year I was bummed about it..."
I am puzzled and do not find a Bettenson translation. I have a large format paperback Dods translation printed by Modern Library. Amazon shows a Bettenson translation however when I downloaded it to kindle and compared with my printed Dods copy the Amazon purported Bettenson translation is the Dods with even the translator preface by Marcus Dods in it. I want to find another translation because some sentence constructions in the Dods are in the least puzzling.
Manny-it says that it’s translated by Marcus Dods.
Jennifer wrote: "Manny-it says that it’s translated by Marcus Dods."Thank you Jennifer.
Mod
Gallicius, it's out of print but you can get it used. Try this at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/City-God-Pengu...
Sorry for being a bit absent the last few days. I've been a little under the weather with sniffles. I've have been reading Book I. I'm maybe mid way. I'm not finding it overly difficult, though I'm not sure what I'm retaining.
Manny wrote: "Yes, thank you Jennifer.Gallicius, it's out of print but you can get it used. Try this at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/City-God-Pengu...
Sorry for being a..."
Thank you Manny. I don't know how you got to this location. When I was clicking on this same cover on Amzon for a kindle version I came up with the Dods translation. Get well soon.
Mod
Gallicius, it's out of print but you can get it used. Try this at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/City-God-Pengu...
Sor..."
I plugged in "Bettenson City of God" rather than just City of God and looking for it.
Thanks. It's just a runny nose. Enough to be annoying and distracting but not enough to stay home from work.
Manny wrote: "Galicius wrote: "Manny wrote: "Yes, thank you Jennifer.Gallicius, it's out of print but you can get it used. Try this at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/City-God-Pengu......"
Hi, a newbie here. I might be behind the discussion, but I just got the Bettenson City of God kindle version by Penguin. The ASIN #B002RI9JAA , Published in 2003.
Hope this helps’
Gary
Mod
Manny wrote: "Welcome Gary. You are not behind in the discussion. So far only introductory comments. We're reading Book I and on Sunday I will open a discussion folder for it."Thanks, good to be here.
Mod
The occasion for writing City of God was the sack of the city of Rome in 410. Rome, as a physical polis, had already deteriorated by the beginning of the fourth century. The capital of the empire had been moved to Constantinople. Even the center of the west had moved from Rome to Milan and Ravenna. The resources for maintaining the infrastructure went elsewhere, and so it was an aging city. But psychologically it was still the eternal city, the heart and soul of their culture, their founding roots. A thousand years after the western half of the empire collapsed, the eastern half, what we call today the Byzantines, still called themselves Romans. That’s how deep Rome had been in their psyche.
So when the news that their founding city had been sacked, pillaged, and destroyed, it came as a trauma to their sense of being. It was akin to how we Catholics felt last year when the Cathedral of Notre Dame burned and was thought to have been destroyed. It was a cultural symbol of all we hold dear and share, and was a defining image of the decline we had been experiencing and sensing. The sack of Rome by the Visigoths was the first time the city of Rome had been invaded by outsiders in 800 years. That time before was by the Gauls in 390 B.C, and Rome then vowed to never be weak again and to be on their guard for any threatening force again. It was that historical disgrace that generated an expansionist mentality in the Roman culture through legends of how their lack of virtue had led to that sack. Years later, Virgil would take up the legend of their developed virtue and put forth that their empire was a result of Roman virtue.
So with any monumental failure, the politicians and, indeed, the voice of the people sought blame. It had only been less than a century since Rome had been Christianized, and the remaining pagans, who looked at their glorious history before Christianity accused Christianity as the root cause of the sack and increasing sense of a coming fall of the west. [By the way, central thesis of Edward Gibbons’s, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a very famous work, is just that, Christianity was to blame. Despite its fame as a work of history, it’s dead wrong.] The occasion for City of God, begun in 412, then was a defense of Christianity against the charges of the pagans. St. Augustine would complete the work in 426.
William Babcock quotes this from City of God as its central thesis:
Two loves have made two cities. Love of self, even to the point of contempt for God, made the earthly city; and love of God, even to the point of contempt for self, made the heavenly city. (XIV, 28)
Now it’s not so simple to say that the earthly city stands for the pagans and the heavenly city stands for the Christians—Augustine is way more complex than that—but the earthly city does encapsulate those who lack virtue and the heavenly city does encapsulate those who live by virtue. And Augustine will argue, Christianity was the means of which virtue, which had faded in pagan Rome, was re-introduced into society, and therefore could not be the reason for the sack of Rome in 410.
Now does Augustine need a 1000 page book to simply defend Christianity against that charge? No. The book is much more than that. It takes on the ambiguity of historical events as Divine Providence—after all, why did God allow Rome to be sacked? To punish Rome for its lack of virtue, to reward the Goths for their virtue, to restore humility to a prideful people? Augustine interweaves history, society, morality, human will, God’s will, and much more to form a vision of earthly and heavenly existence and rationale. Babcock says this in his effort to capture the scope of the composition:
Augustine’s tale of two loves, therefore, does not reduce or eliminate the ambivalence and ambiguity of human history and society. It does not allow us to cut through the uncertainties of human interrelationships and declare with complete assurance that we have found the true, the just, and the good society or, in contrast, the false, the unjust, and the evil society in any specific social or political grouping. Rather, it creates a context—an immensely complex context—within which we can interpret the modes of human behavior and the forms of human society without ever being able to assure ourselves that any one group is all right or all wrong. It is not a context that prevents or prohibits moral judgment. In fact, it might well be called a guide to moral judgment and a charting of the way of virtue…God alone, then, can see who does and who does not finally belong to each city, and God alone can achieve the separation of the one from the other.
The work is divided into two parts, and each part also divided. Part 1 (Books I through X) critiques the pagan world view. Books I through V challenges the pagan religion; Books VI through X challenges pagan philosophy. Part II expatiates on Christianity and the relationship between the two cities. It divides into three parts. Books XI through XIV discuss the formation of the two cities; Books XV through XVIII discus the two cities’ foundational theological origins from Judaism; Books XIX through XII discuss the eventual destiny of the two cities.
I hoped that helped. If you have more to add, please do. If I need correction, please offer it.
Mod
I finally found this through my online library, but only in audio version. 48 hours. I would get started, but it's already checked out. I will get to this eventually.
Dänah wrote: "I finally found this through my online library, but only in audio version. 48 hours. I would get started, but it's already checked out. I will get to this eventually."librivox.org has a fine free complete reading of "The City of God" on-line. It is always available and never checked-out.
Mod
Danah, welcome! I was just about to post a summary of Book XI. I will do so shortly. But you can read City of God online. Here from New Advent:
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120...
Just click the Books in sequence. I also saw that your native language is German. I bet if you searched in German "City of God online text German translation" it might exist.
Glad you have found us. Well be reading City of God Books XI thru Books XVI for the next month and a half.
Mod
If it is easier, by all means read or listen to it in German. It will not diminish your ability to follow here. I do it all the time, though usually with the classics group I follow. I figure if the book is a translation anyway, German or English, I might as will read it in my native tongue. I must admit, I haven't done it with City of God.
Catholic Thought
Books mentioned in this topic
City of God (other topics)City of God (other topics)
Introduction to the Devout Life (other topics)
The Iliad (other topics)
The Odyssey (other topics)
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Maria Boulding, an English Catholic nun, apparently translated many of St. Augustine’s works, but apparently not City of God.
It seems that if you want a translation from the last fifty or sixty years, you are limited to four translations. There is the 1972 translation by Henry Bettenson. His Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_S... says he is a medeavil and early Christian scholar from an “Anglican perspective.” Penguin puts out a reasonably priced paperback ($17+) of his translation.
There is a 1958 translation by Gerald G. Walsh, S. J, but unfortunately only an abridged version seems to be available.
There is the R. W. Dyson translation, published in 1998. He too is an early Christian scholar. The reviews of his translation seems to emphasize clear and fluent English. His paperback comes in at nearly $40.
Finally there is a 2012 translation by William Babcock is annotated and scholarly. It got rave reviews and the advisory board seems to be all from Catholic religious orders. I think this is the one I would prefer but the cost gives me pause. You have to buy it in two volumes. The first volume in paperback lists at $21.52 and the second at $39.87. That’s over sixty dollars for the pair. Or you can get the Kindle versions 19.99 each.
Those are your options. What do you think?