St Augustine
St Augustine
Reaction One: There is a fascinating fellow in Carthage* named Aurelius Augustinus* (354- 430) (later to be St. Augustine*). He leads a riotous youth, carousing and enjoying the theatre.
A practicing Manichaean* (see above), he has a spiritual crisis and turns Christian in 387. He goes back to the rich city of Carthage and rapidly rises to become bishop in 395. What makes this particular fellow so fascinating is the influence he has on the next thousand years or so. He is apparently a terrific speaker and an indefatigable writer. His influence throughout the Christian world is second only to St. Paul*'s. In his major works, The City of God* and Confessions*, he champions orthodoxy against his former belief and other heresies.
Augustine's* reaction to impending doom is rather like that of the turtle. Pull in your head and tough it out. In this case the turtle shell in question is a current craze in Christian thinking derived from that old pagan, Plato*. The new Platonists (Neoplatonists) find Plato's* ideas really soothing for people persecuted by the state and liable to suffering.
Plato was very picky about distinguishing appearance from reality and opinion from knowledge. For him the real world around him was only a shadow of reality and only the product of opinion. Real knowledge could only be found in the pure, unadulterated ideas you had in your mind of all the things you observed. The real world was only a series of shadows on the screen of your mind.
This really appeals to the Christians. They figure that all the mess of daily life is only a shadow of the truth. Suffering will pass and only the soul is real. The soul will one day return to the ideal world from which it came. St. Jerome* has translated the Scriptures into Latin in 405 and his version becomes the accepted one in the West. Under Augustine* and Jerome* ecclesiastical Latin takes shape. So Augustine* takes these Neoplatonist* ideas, mixes them up with the Scriptures, and comes up with a complete set of rules for living and a systematic structure for Christian society. He writes it all out in The City of God*.
His story claims that ever since that unfortunate incident in the Garden of Eden, there have been two 'cities' in human society, one is God's, the other is Satan's. God's city (Jerusalem*) is the church. That means that the state is Satan's city (Babylon*, definitely including that Satanic practice called theatre). The current disaster of the fall of Rome can be blamed on the Church's being the servant of a pagan secular authority. That can easily be fixed by having the His story claims that ever since that unfortunate incident in the Garden of Eden, there have been two 'cities' in human society, one is God's, the other is Satan's. God's city (Jerusalem*) is the church. That means that the state is Satan's city (Babylon*, definitely including that Satanic practice called theatre). The current disaster of the fall of Rome can be blamed on the Church's being the servant of a pagan secular authority. That can easily be fixed by having the
Augustine's* ideas would have had less effect if there hadn't already been a system in place with which to implement them. Which brings us to the monastic orders and monasticism*.
Parts
» Euripides* And The Crumbling State
» Aristophanes* - He Who Laughs Last, Laughs Best
» Take The Frogs* for instance -
» Alexander And Logical Thinking
» Rome While all this is going on in the Greek-dominated Hellenistic world, the Romans* are busy
» Roman Writers c.275 BCE - c.110 BCE During The Era Of Senate Supremacy
» From Classical Light Into The Dark Ages The Fifth Century
» The End of the Western Empire in Italy
» Why Europe Isn't Very Interesting In The Sixth Century
» Islam* Enters Europe As We Enter The Eighth Century
» Vikings Move On As Does Islamic Culture
» Theatre Reappears In Bits And Pieces As We Move Onward Into The Tenth Century
» Europe Moves On Into The Eleventh Century
» As The Twelfth Century Begins Economic And Intellectual Profits
» The Third Crusade The One We All Remember
» More Crusades And A Small Renaissance As We Go Into The Thirteenth Century
» The Small Renaissance Part of the Century
» THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE SPACE IN CHURCH DRAMA -
» The Fourteenth Century And We Come To The Down Part Of The Late Middle Ages
» The Black Death* Comes To Europe
» Everything Takes Off In All Directions At Once
» The Renaissance Officially Begins
» Italian Theatrical Renaissance Gets Going
» Brief Consideration of the Range of Plays
» The Winds Of Reformation* Begin In Germany -
» Theatrical Scenery Takes Off
» Background for Spanish Theatre -
» Other Current Spanish Playwrights
» The English Renaissance 1588-1629
» Sources Of English Playwrighting
» William Shakespeare* -(1564-1616)
» English Settlements Begin In America
» Spanish Court Theatre Flourishes
» The French Theatre Finally Gets Up and Running Introduction
» Back in France Richelieu* Pushes Theatre Development
» English Religious Opposition Increases
» England Falls into Civil War
» English Restoration Theatre Begins
» Middle Class and Sentimental English Theatre
» Europe and America in Social Ferment
» Germany and the Beginnings of Romanticism
» American Revolutionary Times Begin
» Melodrama,* Popular Theatre, and Napoleon MELODRAMA*
» Realistic Elements In Production
» Political Philosophy Moves On
» The Mexican War* and Nationalism
» The 1848 Revolutions and Nationalism
» Some of his best known plays:
» 1908 - Theatre Theorists Publish
» New Connections, New Starts - 1911 -
» And After 1914-1925 Introduction
» The Russian Revolution - 1917
» America Draws Back Into Its Shell -
» Second World War and Its Aftermath
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