Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Aspects of Mediaeval Thought on Church and State

1947; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0034670500039474

1748-6858

Gerhart B. Ladner,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

“Two loves,” St. Augustine says in De Civitate Dei , “have made two cities, love of self unto contempt of God the Earthly City, love of God unto contempt of self the Heavenly City,” the City of God. These “cities”— civitates —are, of course, not states, but societies; St. Augustine himself tells us that the term civitas is an equivalent of the term society. They are societies, however, of a special kind. The Ciyitds Dei is a “mystical” society of all the elect, past, present and future. The Civitas Terrena , the Earthly City, is identical neither with the earthly state nor with any particular earthly state such as the Roman Empire, nor with any merely human society, it too is a “mystical” society, that of the impious, the damned.