On The Riot Of Calama And Augustine's Political Response

Augustine is regarded as the last person for the ancient world and the first one for the modern world.The Roman Empire in which he lived was experiencing a journey of Christianization.There were theoretical disputes and physical conflicts among paganism,Catholic Churches,the Donatists and Manichaeism.Facing these difficulties,Augustine struggle with the classical political philosophy and replaced the love of city with the love of God.He supported the policy of religious coercion and the rules of penance system,and finally developed a systematic Christian political ethics.The following topics are still controversial among contemporary scholars.First,whether did Augustine terminate ancient Western civilization and establish a kind of Christian political ethics? Second,whether was his policy of religious coercion and confession representing a kind of Christian political authority?For the first question,the key is how to understand the relationship between Augustine and Cicero.This thesis focuses on Augustine's correspondences with Necatarius,a pagan citizen of Calama.They discussed about the riot of Calama in408.In the letters,Necatarius praised Roman traditional virtues,including patriotism,supported by Cicero and thus made a plea for pagan rioters;however,besides rejecting these excuses,Augustine not only redefined the meaning of republic,but divided a city of God and a city of earth.He began to reassess the idea of glory and patriotism cherished by the Romans and to argue that there was never a kind of sacred relationship between citizens and their state.He eventually replaced a Ciceronian love of state with a Christian love of God and a pursuit of Roman glory with a pursuit of eternal happiness.For the second question,we need to analyze the problem of religious violence faced by Augustine and the North African Catholic church in the fourth and fifth centuries.In the theory of religious coercion,Augustine argued for the necessity of punishment and its basic principles.He constantly emphasized that love was always the starting point and the aim of punishment.Therefore,religious coercion was totallydifferent from religious persecution.