Augustine City of God Commentary Project

Overview

Classicists, medievalists, theologians, political theorists, students of comparative literature and historians of ideas are interested in Augustine's De civitate Dei. For a wider audience, it is a foundational text (often misrepresented) for Christian understanding of church and state, including just war theory. This project will generate further interest; 2010 sees the anniversary of the "fall of Rome" and the anti-Christian challenge to which Augustine responded.

Funded by a generous five year grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB), this project will produce a printed commentary in five volumes on De civitate Dei. This commentary will be printed by Oxford University Press, and will be on the scale of OUP's Odyssey commentary (1988-92). The commentary is designed to fill a hole in modern scholarship, offering a detailed analysis of the text (in English) that is suitable for modern students and scholars.

Contributors to the project will also develop a web site (this site) so that sections of the commentary can be published in advance of print volumes, allowing updates, searchable text, hypertext links for interest groups, and "teaching versions".

Current Status