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Pentecost
Cultural / Political

The Sack of Rome

The fall of the eternal city — and the writing of the City of God.

410 ADRome

The Visigoths under Alaric sacked Rome, shaking the ancient world's confidence. In its aftermath Augustine of Hippo wrote The City of God, distinguishing the passing city of man from the eternal city of God.

The Sack of Rome by the Visigoths, 24 August 410 — by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre, 1890.
Joseph-Noël Sylvestre, 1890 — Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Rome had not fallen to a foreign enemy in eight hundred years. When the Visigoths under Alaric entered and plundered the city in 410, the shock ran through the empire. Some blamed the Christians: Rome had abandoned its old gods, and disaster had followed.

Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, answered the charge in a vast work, The City of God. He distinguished two cities — the earthly city, built on love of self, and the City of God, built on love of God — intermingled in history but bound for different ends.

Rome's fall taught the Church a lesson it would need again: no earthly city is eternal. The Christian's hope is not in the survival of an empire but in the city that comes down from God.