Defining the City: Augustine between His Latin Antecedents and His Medieval Followers

This chapter examines the five passages in which Augustine explicitly defines the concept of 'ciuitas' (in Quaestiones euangeliorum, Epistula 138, De ciuitate dei 1.15, Epistula 155, and De ciuitate dei 15.8), showing that, despite differences in wording, they can all be traced back to a single coherent definition built on two conceptual elements: 'hominum multitudo' and 'concordia', the latter understood as a social bond. Unlike Cicero, Augustine's principal source, Augustine does not treat a legal bond ('ius') as essential to this definition, thereby emphasizing the communitarian rather than the strictly political or juridical character of the 'ciuitas'. The chapter then traces the Latin antecedents of this notion—examining Cicero, Apuleius, Marius Victorinus, and early Christian writers—before turning to the medieval reception of Augustine's definition through three lines of evidence: verbatim citations by authors such as Thomas Aquinas, the early Franciscan school, John Wyclif, and Meister Eckhart; the conceptual affinity with alternative definitions, most notably Isidore of Seville's and the widespread paretymology 'ciuitas quasi ciuium unitas'; and the relative marginality, in medieval sources, of pre-Augustinian definitions of 'ciuitas'. The chapter concludes by hypothesizing that Augustine's definition exerted its deepest influence in theological and philosophical contexts, while medieval jurists, requiring a more explicitly legal notion, tended to rely on alternative definitions—an hypothesis calling for further investigation into medieval understandings of 'ciuitas'.