Augustine, Distributism, & Empire

In preparing to teach on on Augustine's City of God I ran across the following passage:

Let them see the possibility that good men really shouldn’t rejoice at the expanding of the empire.[1] … ; and human affairs being thus more happy, all kingdoms would have been small, rejoicing in neighborly concord; and thus there would have been very many kingdoms of nations in the world, as there are very many houses of citizens in a city. Therefore, to carry on war and extend a kingdom over wholly subdued nations seems to bad men to be felicity, to good men necessity…. [Victory] would have surely been the case if, instead of a stone on the capitol,[2] the true King of kings and the Lord of lords would have dwelled there and been known.[3]

Augustine believed that the city of God was the last best hope for the city of man. The Roman Empire was too big for its own good and had gotten to where it was by being bad. Rome did not conquer because it had to wage just wars, but because it worshipped Jupiter. It hurled its lightening bolts around the Mediterranean until they began to short circuit.

The Barbarians had been biding their time and now, a la St. Jerome, the city of man that had taken the world was about to be really taken. Too bad they hadn't worshipped the true king of heaven (at least until lately and even then half-heartedly). Maybe then they would have stayed small and neighborly. Trying to do too much as an individual or a nation only diminishes you. Stay small and beautiful. Empires are for chumps.

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[1] Trans. mine: Videant ergo ne forte non pertineat ad uiros bonos gaudere de regni latitudine. The rest is Dod's trans. unless noted otherwise.

[2] Statue to Zeus/Jupiter.

[3] Trans. mine: Quod profecto haberetur, si non lapis in Capitolio, sed uerus rex regum et dominus dominantium cognosceretur atque coleretur.