ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the use made by a number of thirteenth-century writers of Saint Augustine's statements about the origins and nature of political authority and subjection, mainly in the De civitate Dei, book xix, chapters 14 and 15. It also examine the meaning of Augustine's statements concerning the origins of political authority, obligation, and subordination in the two chapters of his De civitate Dei, in the light of other relevant passages. The chapter provides some thirteenth-century interpretations of the same chapters by a number of writers of both the Aristotelian and what is traditionally referred to as the 'Augustinian' schools. It discusses some light on the interpretation of Augustine's views primarily by St. Thomas Aquinas. The looseness of Augustine's conception of 'nature' is too notorious to require comment; and the extent to which one should speak of his conception of 'political' authority, and more of the 'state', is open to debate.
