Note 36 — Chapter VI · THE CONVERSION OF THE SAXONS.

Augustine—the theologian and bishop of Hippo—completed in the year 426 his book De Civitate Dei (The City of God), which is regarded the greatest monument of his genius and learning. The chief aim of this book is to vindicate the claims of the Christian Church against those who asserted that such calamities as the capture of Rome by Alaric resulted from the new religion. On the contrary Augustine conceives of the Church as a “new order rising on the ruins of the old Roman empire:” a claim that might easily be used to defend the transference of despotic authority from the empire to the Church.