A History of Western Philosophy

The hero of this period is Athanasius (ca. 297-373), who was throughout his long life the most intrepid champion of Nicene ortho ...

opinions as far as they dared, except for Julian the Apostate ( 361363), who, as a pagan, was neutral as regards the internal di ...

Arian heretics. Civilization declined for centuries, and it was not until nearly a thousand years later that Christendom again p ...

cluding a thorough grounding in Greek. When he grew up he took to the law, in which he was very successful; and at the age of th ...

removed by Constantius, the son of Constantine, and restored by Julian the Apostate. The Emperor Gratian again removed the statu ...

Saint Ambrose won his point, but a subsequent usurper, Eugenius, who favoured the heathen, restored the altar and statue. It was ...

citizens. He was formally commanded to surrender the basilica, and the soldiers were ordered to use violence if necessary. But i ...

them in an indiscriminate slaughter. Hereupon Ambrose, who had endeavoured in advance to restrain the Emperor, but in vain, wrot ...

and which Jerome firmly rejected. He accepted the help of rabbis, given secretly for fear of the Jews. In defending himself agai ...

snobbery in the Saint's attitude to them. When Paula died and was buried at Bethlehem, Jerome composed an epitaph for her tomb: ...

"rude and repellent." At last, during a fever, he dreamed that, at the Last Judgement, Christ asked him who he was, and he repli ...

pire, is swallowed up in one tremendous fire; and there is no part of the earth where Romans are not in exile. Churches once hel ...

do not think it has any comparable predecessors. Saint Augustine is in some ways similar to Tolstoy, to whom, however, he is sup ...

were idolators, they married gentiles, they failed to observe the Law. God's purposes were centred on the Jews, but, since right ...

Augustine relates how he learnt Latin, painlessly, at his mother's knee, but hated Greek, which they tried to teach him at schoo ...

to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and I h ...

and understood whatever I could read?... For I had my back to the light, and my face to the things enlightened; whence my face.. ...

mind is even more attractive than the knowledge of those things which I desired; and such I found him, in all the more difficult ...

There is a very interesting chapter * in which he compares the Platonic philosophy with Christian doctrine. The Lord, he says, a ...

after a brief period of meditation in retirement, was baptized by Saint Ambrose. His mother rejoiced, but died not long afterwar ...