The City of God stands as Augustine's masterwork of theological defense and construction, written over thirteen years in response to accusations that Christianity brought ruin upon Rome. This first volume contains the first ten books of sustained refutation—demolishing pagan claims that traditional worship secured either temporal prosperity or eternal happiness—followed by the beginning of his positive vision in Books Eleven through Thirteen, where he traces the origin of two societal orders to the primordial division among the angels. What emerges is not merely an apology for Christianity but a philosophy of history that subordinate the fate of empires to the hidden providence of the one true God, whose sovereignty extends from creation through the fall to the final judgment.
The longest and most detailed section of the book addresses the violation of Christian women during the sack. Augustine defends their sanctity with a rigorous analysis of the nature of purity. He establishes as an unassailable principle that virtue has its throne in the soul and rules the members of the body, making them holy through the holiness of the will. When the will remains firm and unshaken, nothing that another person does to or upon the body can be imputed as sin to the one who suffers it, provided the sufferer does not consent. Purity is a virtue of the soul, not a quality of the body that can be destroyed by external violence. If purity could be taken away by force, it would not be a virtue but a physical attribute like beauty or health. But since it resides in the will, it remains intact even when the body is violated.
Augustine acknowledges that a pure woman who suffers violation may feel shame, fearing that the pleasure of the act might be attributed to her consent. But this shame is a proof of her purity, not evidence of guilt. The body may experience sensations apart from the will’s consent, just as a sleeper may experience movements he does not choose. The sanctity of the body consists not in the integrity of its members but in the holy purpose to which the will dedicates it. A virgin who goes to meet her seducer with the intention of yielding has already lost her sanctity, though her body remains untouched; a woman who is violated against her will retains her sanctity, for her will has not consented.
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