The Library
1774 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
401–500
3 works
419–421
Latin
De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia
Augustine of Hippo · 354 – 430
Marriage is good, its three goods are offspring, fidelity, and the bond — and yet the desire by which children are conceived is itself disordered, and carries the fault forward into every child born. Julian of Eclanum read this and accused Augustine of never having stopped being a Manichaean.
c. 421–422
Latin
Contra Iulianum
Augustine of Hippo · 354 – 430
Julian of Eclanum, a deposed Italian bishop and much the sharper logician, had accused Augustine of making God the author of evil and of importing Mani into the church. Augustine answers by assembling the fathers — Cyprian, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Basil — to show that original sin was taught before he was born.
c. 419–430; survives in Augustine's quotations
Latin
Julian of Eclanum · c. 386 – c. 455
The most formidable of Augustine's opponents, preserved almost entirely inside the books written to destroy him. Julian argues that a God who damns infants for another's act is worse than any human judge, that desire is a natural faculty like hunger, and that Augustine has never stopped hating the body.
1001–1100
1 work
c. 1099–1100
Latin
Anselm of Canterbury · 1033–1109
A sequel to Cur Deus Homo asking how Christ could be sinless if he took his humanity from a descendant of Adam, and defining original sin as an absence of owed righteousness.
4 of 1774 works