ABSTRACT
I concentrate here on particular passages of the City of God, especially of its ‘second instalment’, which includes Books VI and VII; but I do so within the context of broader questions concerning late antique Christianity: whether the inculcation of virtue on the one hand and the development of liturgical ceremony (homily as well as sacrament) on the other were two separate endeavours (hence ‘morality’ and ‘cult’) mounted by two distinguishable types of religious leader, and whether the language used in each enterprise helped either to dissolve or to explain the possible distinction between them. In Augustine’s case, we are dealing with a bishop; and we have to remember that bishops in their fourth-and fifth-century guise were a surprisingly recent invention: in defining a role for themselves, they were heavily dependent on the florid oratory, the grand urban scale and the visible cultic drama of a tolerated church.1 Yet those very bases of their effective authority – words, buildings and ceremonies – were as much affected by moral concern as were the intimate dialogues of ascetic devotees.2
