ABSTRACT
St Augustine of Hippo is most influential of the Church Fathers to write on marriage, and he returns to the subject repeatedly across his large body of writings. In praising virginity, Augustine is careful to take a more moderate line than Jerome does, and not to condemn marriage outright. The Church preferred widows to maintain chastity after the death of their spouses, but recognized that remarriage was permissible, given that the prohibition of remarriage might lead, not to chastity, but to fornication or adultery. On the City of God against the Pagans is Augustine's greatest work, originating as a defence of Christianity, now the official religion of the Roman Empire, in the face of that empire's rapid decline. The immediate prompt was the entry of the Visigoths, led by Alaric, into Rome in August 410. Augustine's early writings on marriage are an attempt to refute Jovinian, but the strength of Jerome's assault causes Augustine to take a more moderate line.
