City of God 7.23–7.33

Chapter 23. On the Earth, which Varro affirms to be a goddess because that mind of the world which he thinks is God pervades even this lowest part of his body and imparts divine force to it.

There is surely one earth, which we see full of its own living creatures; yet it is itself a great body among the elements and the lowest part of the world. Why do they want it to be a goddess? Because it is fruitful? Why, then, are men not rather gods, who make it more fruitful by cultivating it — but when they plough it, not when they adore it? “But the part of the world-soul,” they say, “which pervades it makes it a goddess.” As if the soul were not more evident in men, where there is no question whether it exists; and yet men are not held to be gods, and — what is gravely to be lamented — by a wonderful and pitiable error they are made subject, in worshipping and adoring, to those who are not gods and than whom they themselves are better. And certainly the same Varro, in the same book on the select gods, affirms that there are three grades of soul in all nature as a whole. One passes through all the living parts of the body and has no sensation, but only the power to live; this force, he says, flows in our body into the bones, nails, and hair, as in the world trees are nourished and grow without sensation and live in a way of their own. The second grade of soul is that in which there is sensation; this force reaches into the eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, and touch. The third grade is the highest, which is called mind, in which intelligence is pre-eminent; all mortal beings except man lack it. This part of the world-soul he calls God, and in us it is called genius. In the world, he says, stones and earth, which we see, into which sensation does not flow, are like the bones and nails of God; but the sun, moon, and stars, which we perceive and by which he himself perceives, are his senses; and the ether is his mind. Its force, which reaches into the stars, also makes them gods; and what flows through them into the earth is the goddess Tellus; and what flows from there into the sea and ocean is the god Neptune. Let him return, then, from this which he thinks natural theology, into which he went out, tired of these windings and turnings, as if to rest; let him return, I say, let him return to the civil. Here I still hold him; for a while I am dealing with this. I do not yet say that, if earth and stones are like our bones and nails, they likewise lack intelligence, as they lack sensation; or that, if our bones and nails are said to have intelligence because they are in a man who has intelligence, he who calls these things in the world gods is as foolish as one who calls our bones and nails men. But these things perhaps should be dealt with together with the philosophers; for now I want him still as a political theologian. For it may be that, although he seems to have wished to lift his head a little into the freedom, as it were, of natural theology, yet, while still turning this book over and thinking that he was engaged in it, he looked back at it even from there, and said this so that his ancestors or other cities might not be thought to have worshipped Tellus and Neptune in vain. But this I say: since the earth is one, why did the part of the world-mind which pervades the earth not also make one goddess, whom he calls Tellus? And if it did, where will Orcus be, the brother of Jupiter and Neptune, whom they call Father Dis? Where will his wife Proserpina be, who according to another opinion given in the same books is said to be not the fruitfulness of the earth but its lower part? But if they say that the part of the world-mind, when it pervades the upper part of the earth, makes the god Father Dis, and when it pervades the lower part, the goddess Proserpina, what will that Tellus be? For all that she was has been so divided into these two parts and gods that it is impossible to find what or where she herself is as a third — unless someone says that these gods, Orcus and Proserpina, together are the one goddess Tellus, and that there are no longer three but either one or two. And yet three are spoken of, three are held, three are worshipped with their own altars, their own shrines, rites, images, and priests, and through these also with their own deceitful demons, who debauch the prostituted soul. Let him answer further: what part of the earth does the part of the world-mind pervade in order to make the god Tellumo? “No,” he says, “but one and the same earth has a twofold force: a masculine, in that it produces seeds, and a feminine, in that it receives and nourishes them; hence it is called Tellus from the feminine force and Tellumo from the masculine.” Why, then, do the pontiffs, as he himself points out, adding two others as well, perform divine service to four gods: to Tellus, Tellumo, Altor, and Rusor? Of Tellus and Tellumo we have spoken. Why to Altor? “Because,” he says, “all things that are born are nourished (aluntur) from the earth.” Why to Rusor? “Because,” he says, “all things return again (rursus) to the same place.”

Chapter 24. On the surnames of Tellus and their meanings, which, even if they indicated many things, ought not to have confirmed the opinion that there are many gods.

The one earth, then, because of this fourfold force, ought to have had four surnames, not to have made four gods — just as there is one Jupiter with so many surnames and one Juno with so many surnames, in all of which a manifold force is said to belong to one god or one goddess, and the multitude of surnames does not also make a multitude of gods. But just as even the most degraded women sometimes grow weary and repent of the crowds they have sought out of lust, so the soul that has become degraded and prostituted to unclean spirits, as it has greatly delighted to multiply gods for itself before whom to prostrate itself to be defiled, has sometimes also grown weary of it. For Varro himself, as if ashamed of that very crowd, wants Tellus to be one goddess. “They say,” he says, “that she is also the Great Mother; that she has a drum signifies that she is the globe of the earth; that she has towers on her head, towns; that she is represented seated, that though all things move around her, she herself does not move. That they made Galli serve this goddess signifies that those who lack seed must follow the earth, for in it all things are found. That they throw themselves about before her teaches,” he says, “that those who cultivate the earth must not sit idle, for there is always something for them to do. The sound of the cymbals signifies the clatter of iron tools and of hands, and of such things, that is made in cultivating a field; they are of bronze because the ancients cultivated the earth with bronze before iron was discovered. They add a lion,” he says, “loose and tame, to show that there is no kind of land so remote and so fiercely wild that it is not fitting to subdue and cultivate it.” Then he adds that, because they named Mother Tellus with several names and surnames, she was thought to be a number of gods. “They think,” he says, “that Tellus is Ops, because she is made better by work (opus); Mother, because she bears very many things; Great, because she bears food; Proserpina, because crops creep forth (proserpant) from her; Vesta, because she is clothed (vestiatur) with herbs. And so,” he says, “they not unreasonably refer other goddesses to her.” If, then, she is one goddess — though in truth she is not even that — why meanwhile go off into many? Let these be the many names of one goddess, not so many goddesses as names. But the authority of his erring ancestors weighs him down and compels the same Varro to tremble after this opinion. For he adds: “With which the opinion of our ancestors about these goddesses, that they thought them to be many, does not conflict.” How does it not conflict, when it is one thing for one goddess to have many names and quite another for there to be many goddesses? “But it can happen,” he says, “that the same thing is both one and that there are several things in it.” I grant that there are several things in one man; are there therefore also several men? So there are several things in one goddess; are there therefore also several goddesses? But let them divide and combine, multiply and fold back and entangle as they please. These are the illustrious mysteries of Tellus and the Great Mother, from which everything is referred to mortal seeds and the practice of agriculture. Do the drum, the towers, the Galli, the mad tossing of limbs, the clash of cymbals, the fiction of lions — referred to these things and having this end — promise anyone eternal life? Do the castrated Galli serve this Great Goddess in order to signify that those who lack seed must follow the earth, as though it were not rather this very service that makes them lack seed? Do they acquire seed by following this goddess when they lack it, or rather lose seed by following this goddess when they have it? Is this interpreting or detesting? Nor is it noticed how far the malignant demons prevailed, who did not dare to promise anything great in these rites and yet were able to demand such cruel things. If the earth were not a goddess, men would lay hands on it by working it, to obtain seeds through it, not on themselves by raging, to lose seed for its sake. If it were not a goddess, it would become fruitful through the hands of others, and would not compel a man to become barren by his own hands. As for the fact that in the rites of Liber a respectable matron crowned the male member while the multitude looked on, where her husband too perhaps stood by, blushing and sweating, if there is any shame in men; and that in the celebration of marriages the new bride was ordered to sit on the shaft of Priapus — these things are far more contemptible and lighter than this most cruel shamefulness, or most shameful cruelty, where by demonic rites both sexes are so mocked that neither is destroyed by its own wound. There the evil eye on the fields is feared; here the amputation of the members is not feared. There the modesty of the new bride is so dishonored that neither her fruitfulness nor even her virginity is taken away; here manhood is so cut off that the man is neither turned into a woman nor left a man.

Chapter 25. What interpretation of the castration of Attis the teaching of the Greek sages has found.

And that Attis, in memory of whose love the Gallus is castrated, has not been mentioned, nor has Varro sought an interpretation of him. But the learned and wise Greeks by no means kept silent about so holy and so illustrious an account. Because of the springtime face of the earth, which is more beautiful than at other seasons, Porphyry, a noted philosopher, declared that Attis signifies flowers, and that he was castrated because the flower falls before the fruit. So they did not compare the man himself, or one who was a sort of man, who was called Attis, to the flower, but his male parts. For these fell while he was still living; or rather, they did not fall, nor were they plucked, but plainly torn off; nor, when that flower was lost, did any fruit follow afterwards, but rather barrenness. What, then, of himself, what was left of him, whatever remained after the castration — what is it said to signify? To what is it referred? What interpretation is brought forward for it? Or do they, by laboring at this in vain and finding nothing, persuade us that what rumor has spread and has been committed to writing about a castrated man is rather what should be believed? Rightly did our Varro turn away from this and refuse to say it; for it did not escape that most learned man.

Chapter 26. On the shamefulness of the rites of the Great Mother.

Likewise concerning the effeminate men consecrated to this same Great Mother against all the modesty of men and women — who until yesterday, with dripping hair and whitened faces, with slack limbs and a womanish gait, went through the streets and lanes of Carthage demanding from the very shopkeepers the means to live shamefully — Varro chose to say nothing, nor do I remember reading anything about them anywhere. Interpretation failed, reason blushed, speech fell silent. The Great Mother surpassed all the gods, her sons, not by the greatness of her divinity but by the greatness of her crime. Not even the monstrosity of Janus is to be compared with this monster. He had deformity only in his images; she has deformed cruelty in her rites. He had members added in stone; she has members lost in men. This disgrace is not surpassed by all the many and great debaucheries of Jupiter himself. He, among his seductions of women, disgraced heaven with one Ganymede; she, with so many avowed and public effeminates, both defiled the earth and did injury to heaven. Perhaps we could compare Saturn with her in this kind of most shameful cruelty, or even put him before her, since he is said to have castrated his father; but in the rites of Saturn men could be killed by the hands of others rather than mutilated by their own. He devoured his sons, as the poets tell, and the natural philosophers interpret this as they please; as history reports, he killed them. But the Romans did not adopt the practice of the Carthaginians, who sacrificed their sons to him. Yet this Great Mother of the gods brought castrated men even into Roman temples and kept up this savage custom, being believed to aid the strength of the Romans by cutting off the manhood of men. What are the thefts of Mercury, the wantonness of Venus, the debaucheries and indecencies of the rest compared with this evil? We would produce them from the books, if they were not sung and danced daily in the theaters. But what are these compared with so great an evil, whose greatness befitted only the Great Mother? Especially since those things are said to have been invented by the poets — as though the poets also invented the fact that these things are pleasing and acceptable to the gods! That they were sung or written, then, may be the audacity or impudence of the poets; but that they were added to divine rites and honors, at the command and demand of the deities themselves — what is this but the crime of the gods, or rather the confession of demons and the deception of wretched men? But that the Mother of the gods earned worship by the consecration of castrated men, this the poets did not invent; they chose rather to shudder at it than to sing of it. Is anyone to be consecrated to these select gods in order to live happily after death, when, consecrated to them, he cannot live honorably before death, subject to such foul superstitions and bound to unclean demons? “But all these things,” he says, “are referred to the world (mundus).” Let him see whether it is not rather to the unclean (inmundus). And what cannot be referred to the world, if it is shown to be in the world? But we seek a mind which, relying on true religion, does not adore the world as its god, but praises the world as the work of God for God's sake, and, cleansed from the uncleanness of the world, comes clean (mundus) to God, who founded the world (mundus).

Chapter 27. On the fictions of the natural philosophers, who neither worship the true divinity nor worship with the worship with which the true divinity is to be worshipped.

We see, indeed, that these select gods became more famous than the rest, not so that their merits might be made illustrious, but so that their disgraces might not be hidden; hence it is more credible that they were men, as not only poetic but also historical writings have handed down. For when Virgil says: “First came Saturn from ethereal Olympus, fleeing the arms of Jupiter, an exile from his lost realm,” and what follows on this matter, Euhemerus lays out the whole history of it, which Ennius turned into the Latin tongue; and since those who before us wrote against errors of this kind, in Greek or in Latin, have set out a great deal about it, I have not wished to dwell on it. When I consider the physical explanations themselves, by which learned and acute men try to turn these human things into divine things, I see nothing that could be referred to anything but temporal and earthly works and bodily nature, or, even if invisible, still changeable nature; and this is in no way the true God. If this were at least done with meanings befitting religion, it would indeed be lamentable that the true God was not announced and proclaimed by them; yet it would be in some measure tolerable that such foul and shameful things were not done or commanded. But now, since it is wicked to worship either a body or a soul in place of the true God, by whose indwelling alone the soul becomes happy, how much more wicked is it to worship these things in such a way that the body or soul of the worshipper obtains neither salvation nor human dignity! Therefore, if some element of the world, or some created spirit, even one not unclean and evil, is worshipped with temple, priest, and sacrifice, which are due to the true God, this is not evil because the things with which it is worshipped are evil, but because they are such that he alone should be worshipped with them to whom such worship and service is due. But if anyone contends that he worships the one true God, that is, the creator of every soul and body, with stupid and monstrous images, with the sacrifice of human beings, with the crowning of the male member, with the wages of debauchery, with the cutting of limbs, with the removal of the genitals, with the consecration of effeminates, with festivals of impure and obscene games, he sins not because the one he worships is not to be worshipped, but because he worships the one who is to be worshipped not as he is to be worshipped. But one who worships with such things, that is, shameful and wicked things, and worships not the true God, that is, the maker of soul and body, but a creature, however free from vice — whether it be a soul or a body or soul and body together — sins twice against God: because he worships in God's place what is not God, and because he worships with such things as neither God nor what is not God is to be worshipped with. How these men worshipped, that is, how shamefully and wickedly, is plain; but what or whom they worshipped would be obscure, did not their history testify that those very things which they confess to be foul and shameful were rendered at the fearful demand of the deities. From this it is clear, without any circumlocution, that wicked demons and most unclean spirits were invited by this whole civil theology to visit stupid images and through them to possess foolish hearts as well.

Chapter 28. That Varro's teaching on theology agrees with itself in no part.

What, then, is the use of the most learned and most acute Varro's attempt, by a seemingly subtle argument, to reduce and refer all these gods to heaven and earth? He cannot; they slip through his fingers, spring back, slide away, and fall. For when he is about to speak of the females, that is, the goddesses, he says: “Since, as I said in the first book on places, two origins of the gods have been observed, from heaven and from earth, from which the gods are called partly heavenly and partly earthly: as in the earlier books we began from heaven, when we spoke of Janus, whom some have called heaven and others the world, so in writing about the females we begin from Tellus.” I perceive how great a difficulty so great and so gifted a mind suffers. For he is led by a certain plausible reasoning, that heaven is what acts and earth what is acted upon, and so he attributes to the one a masculine force and to the other a feminine; and he does not notice that it is rather he who does these things who made both. From this he also interprets the famous mysteries of the Samothracians in the preceding book, and promises, as if most religiously, that by writing he will explain them and send them to those who are not even familiar with them. For he says that he has gathered from many indications there that in the images one signifies heaven, another earth, another the patterns of things, which Plato calls ideas; he wants heaven to be understood as Jupiter, earth as Juno, the ideas as Minerva — heaven as that by which something is made, earth as that from which it is made, the pattern as that according to which it is made. On this point I pass over saying that Plato holds these ideas to have such great force that according to them not only did heaven make something, but heaven itself was made. This I do say: that in this book on the select gods he has lost that account of the three gods in which he embraced, as it were, all things. For he assigns male gods to heaven and female to earth; and among the latter he placed Minerva, whom earlier he had placed above heaven itself. Then the male god Neptune is in the sea, which pertains to the earth rather than to heaven. Finally Father Dis, who is called Plouton in Greek, himself also male and brother of both, is said to be an earthly god, holding the upper earth and having his wife Proserpina in the lower. How, then, do they try to refer the gods to heaven and the goddesses to earth? What solidity, what consistency, what sobriety, what definiteness does this argument have? But that Tellus is the beginning of the goddesses — the Great Mother, of course, around whom resounds the mad shamefulness of the effeminate and the castrated, of men who cut themselves and throw themselves about. What, then, is meant by calling Janus the head of the gods and Tellus the head of the goddesses? Neither does error make one head there, nor does frenzy make a sane one here. Why do they struggle in vain to refer these things to the world? Even if they could, no devout man worships the world in place of the true God; and yet the plain truth proves that they cannot do even this. Let them rather refer these things to dead men and to most wicked demons, and no question will remain.

Chapter 29. That all the things which the natural philosophers referred to the world and its parts they ought to have referred to the one true God.

For let us notice in this way how all the things which, in the theology of these gods, they refer to the world as though by physical explanations, may rather be attributed, without any scruple of sacrilegious opinion, to the true God, who made the world, the creator of every soul and every body. We worship God, not heaven and earth, the two parts of which this world consists; nor a soul or souls spread through all living things, but God, who made heaven and earth and all that is in them; who made every soul, whether it lives in whatever way and lacks sense and reason, or whether it also feels, or whether it also understands.

Chapter 30. With what devotion the Creator is distinguished from creatures, so that in place of one God so many gods are not worshipped as there are works of the one author.

And to begin now to run through those works of the one true God, because of which these men made for themselves many false gods while they tried to interpret, as if honorably, most shameful and most wicked rites: we worship that God who has established for the natures he created the beginnings and ends both of their existing and of their moving; who holds, knows, and disposes the causes of things; who founded the force of seeds; who placed the rational soul, which is called the mind, in such living beings as he willed; who gave the faculty and use of speech; who imparted the gift of foretelling the future to such spirits as he pleased, and through whom he pleases himself foretells the future, and through whom he pleases drives away sicknesses; who governs the beginnings, progress, and ends even of wars themselves, when the human race is to be corrected and chastised in that way; who created and rules the most vehement and violent fire of this world, in due proportion to the immense natural order; who is the creator and governor of all the waters; who made the sun the brightest of bodily lights and gave it a fitting force and motion; who does not withdraw his dominion and power even from the underworld itself; who has provided the seeds and nourishment of mortals, whether dry or liquid, assigned to the natures suited to them; who founds the earth and makes it fruitful; who bestows its fruits on animals and men; who knows and orders causes not only principal but also subsequent; who has appointed for the moon its measure; who provides ways in heaven and on earth for changes of place; who has granted to the human minds he created also the knowledge of various arts, to help life and nature; who instituted the union of male and female as a help for propagating offspring; who has granted to the communities of men the gift of earthly fire for the easiest uses, to use on hearths and for lights. These are certainly the things which the most acute and most learned Varro labored to distribute among the select gods by some physical interpretations or other, whether he received them from elsewhere or conjectured them himself. But these things the one true God does and brings about, but as God, that is, whole everywhere, enclosed in no places, bound by no bonds, divisible into no parts, changeable in no part, filling heaven and earth with his present power, not with a needy nature. So he administers all the things he has created that he also allows them to put forth and carry out their own movements. For though they could not exist without him, they are not what he is. He also does many things through angels; but he makes the angels happy only from himself. So, though for some reasons he sends angels to men, he makes men happy not from the angels but from himself, as he does the angels. From this one and true God we hope for eternal life.

Chapter 31. What benefits of God those who follow the truth enjoy as their own, apart from his general bounty.

For besides benefits of this kind, which, through this administration of nature of which we have said something, he bestows on good and bad alike, we have from him a great sign of great love, proper to the good. For though we can by no means give sufficient thanks that we exist, that we live, that we behold heaven and earth, that we have mind and reason by which to seek him who founded all these things, yet what hearts, how many tongues, would claim to be enough to give him thanks for this: that, when we were weighed down and overwhelmed with sins, turned away from the contemplation of his light and blinded by love of darkness, that is, of iniquity, he did not wholly abandon us, but sent us his Word, who is his only Son, so that, through his being born and suffering for us in the flesh he had taken, we might know how much God valued man, and by that unique sacrifice might be cleansed from all sins, and, love being poured out in our hearts by his Spirit, might overcome all difficulties and come to eternal rest and the ineffable sweetness of contemplating him?

Chapter 32. That the mystery of Christ's redemption was lacking in no past times, and was always proclaimed by various signs.

This mystery of eternal life was proclaimed from the very beginning of the human race by angels, through certain signs and sacraments suited to the times, to those to whom it was fitting. Then the Hebrew people was gathered into a single commonwealth, as it were, to enact this mystery; and in it, through some who knew and some who did not know, what has been taking place from the coming of Christ until now, and will take place hereafter, was foretold as going to come. Afterwards that same nation was also scattered among the nations for the sake of the testimony of the Scriptures, in which eternal salvation was foretold as going to be in Christ. For not only all the prophecies that are in words, nor only the precepts of life that form morals and piety and are contained in those writings, but also the rites, priesthoods, tabernacle or temple, altars, sacrifices, ceremonies, festival days, and whatever else pertains to that service which is due to God and in Greek is properly called latreia — all these signified and foretold the things which, for the sake of the eternal life of the faithful in Christ, we believe have been fulfilled, see being fulfilled, and trust will be fulfilled.

Chapter 33. That only through the Christian religion could the deceit of the malignant spirits, who rejoice in the error of men, be made manifest.

Through this one true religion, then, it could be disclosed that the gods of the nations are most unclean demons, who, taking occasion from dead souls or under the appearance of creatures of the world, desire to be thought gods, and with proud impurity rejoice in so-called divine honors, and those wicked and shameful, and begrudge human souls their conversion to the true God. From their most savage and most impious dominion man is set free when he believes in him who gave an example of humility, by which to rise, as great as the pride by which they fell. Of this kind are not only those of whom we have already said much, and others and yet others like them of the other nations and lands, but also these of whom we are now treating, chosen as it were into a senate of the gods — but plainly chosen for the nobility of their crimes, not for the dignity of their virtues. While Varro tries to refer their rites, as it were, to natural explanations, seeking to make shameful things respectable, he cannot find how to make these fit and agree with them, since the real causes of those rites are not those which he thinks, or rather wishes to be thought. For if not only these, but any others of this kind, were the causes, then, although they would have nothing to do with the true God and the eternal life that is to be sought in religion, yet by some account given from the nature of things they would somewhat soften the offense caused by some apparent shamefulness or absurdity in the rites, which was not understood. So he tried to do in the case of certain fables of the theaters or mysteries of the shrines — where he did not acquit the theaters by their likeness to the shrines, but rather condemned the shrines by their likeness to the theaters. Yet he tried as best he could, so that the offense caused to the mind by horrible things might be soothed by an account given, as it were, of natural causes.