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      Over against this earthly polity is set the city of God: that is, the community of Christians whose city is not of this world, who indeed are aliens (peregrini) in this terrestrial world. Such notions were not new. There was a rich Judaic literature of exile which was developed by early Christian writers. It was Paul who wrote to the Corinthians of ‘an house not made with hands’. The anonymous author of the Epistle to Diognetus, writing in about 200 and echoing another Pauline passage, had observed that Christians ‘spend their existence upon earth, but their citizenship is in heaven’.⁸ There were also influences at work from outside the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The Neoplatonic philosophers who strongly influenced the young Augustine had written persuasively of the soul imprisoned in the body, trapped in the flesh, from which it strives to break free. What Augustine did was to express these ideas of exile and alienation with passion and force. To one word in particular he imparted a special resonance: peregrinus. ‘And so long as he is in this mortal body, he is a peregrinus in a foreign land,’ he wrote in Book 19 of De Civitate Dei, echoing II Corinthians v.6. It was a technical term in Roman law: to be a peregrinus meant to be a resident alien, a stranger, a person without kin, friends, sureties, patrons. It was also a word with further connotations within the Judaeo-Christian scriptural tradition. Exile or deprivation were often associated with sin and punishment, but sometimes also with a sense of divinely allotted destiny. Jacob fled into exile because of murderous conflict between kinsmen; his destiny was to inherit the land of his exile or pilgrimage (peregrinationis) and through him were all peoples of the earth to be blessed (Genesis xxviii). So a pilgrim could also be a harbinger, like John the Baptist. Augustine seized upon the possibilities latent in this everyday word. Here was an exacting standard for the Christian. He must become a peregrinus, an exile or pilgrim, make of his life a peregrinatio, a pilgrimage, cutting loose like a monk from the worldly ties that bind and accepting instead the liberating society and disciplines of the city of God: ‘The Heavenly City, while on its earthly pilgrimage, calls forth its citizens from every nation and assembles a multilingual band of pilgrims; not caring about any diversity in the customs, laws and institutions whereby they severally make provision for the achievement and maintenance of earthly peace.’⁹

      Here then is Augustine’s vision of a Christian community not confined to the Roman empire. Other strands of his reading and reflection were woven into it. In common with other Christians of his day Augustine was convinced that the end of the world was near. But before this could happen there had to be a universal preaching of Christianity. ‘This gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the earth as a testimony to all nations: and then the end will come.’ Augustine was forced to elucidate this apocalyptic passage in Matthew’s gospel (Matt. xxiv.14) at the very time that he was working on De Civitate Dei. Prompted by an earthquake on 19 July 418 Bishop Hesychius of Salona (Split) consulted Augustine about Daniel’s prophecies of the end of the world. In his reply Augustine made reference to Matthew’s passage on the in-gathering of the nations which must precede the end and to other biblical passages of similar purport. But Hesychius, evidently a persistent man, was not satisfied and wanted more. He got it. Augustine, never one to skimp where doctrinal exposition was concerned, replied in a long letter divided into no less than fifty-four chapters. This second letter circulated widely as a separate pamphlet under the title De Fine Saeculi (On the End of the World). Hesychius had evidently claimed that the gospel had already been preached to all nations. Not so, argued Augustine, ‘for there are among us, that is in Africa, innumerable barbarian tribes among whom the gospel has not yet been preached … yet it cannot rightly be said that the promise of God does not concern them’ because ‘the Lord did not promise the Romans but all nations to the seed of Abraham’. He went on to elucidate ‘the prophecy made of Christ under the figure of Solomon, “He shall rule from sea to sea” (Psalm lxxii.8)’. This must mean ‘the whole earth with all its inhabitants, because the universe is surrounded by the Ocean sea’. All nations, therefore, ‘as many as God has made’ are to adore the Lord and call upon him.¹⁰ But – and here Augustine turned to Paul’s words in Romans x.14–15 – ‘How shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? How shall they believe Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent?’ Augustine did not follow the logic of the argument to its conclusions: therefore we must send out missionary preachers. But we can see how a combination of influences – the African intellectual tradition, apocalyptic speculations, episcopal responsibilities, ideals of pilgrimage and renunciation – brought him to the brink of that conclusion.

      Another who was brought to that brink was Augustine’s younger contemporary Prosper of Aquitaine. Usually remembered mainly as the writer of a chronicle which is an important source for fifth-century history – we shall meet it in Chapter 3 – Prosper was also the author of works of theological controversy. One of these was called De Vocatione Omnium Gentium (On the Calling of All Nations) and it was composed at Rome in about 440. Prosper’s De Vocatione has been called ‘the first work in Christian literature to be concerned with the salvation of infidels’.¹¹ Salvation, yes; but not quite their evangelization.

      Prosper starts from the proposition that God wishes all men to be saved. However, by His inscrutable judgement some peoples receive the faith later than others. He considers, but rejects, the Eusebian position: ‘Christian grace was not content to have the same frontiers as Rome and has already subjected many peoples to the sceptre of Christ’s cross whom Rome did not conquer with arms.’¹² Christian grace: this lay at the doctrinal heart of Prosper’s concerns. He was an extreme follower of Augustine’s teachings on grace. These had been developed in opposition to the doctrines on free will taught in Italy and subsequently Palestine by the British-born philosopher Pelagius, doctrines which caused a great stir in the church and were eventually declared heretical in 418. Prosper’s general position was that it was for divine grace alone to bring about conversion. One suspects that he would have sympathized with the Baptist ministers who rebuked William Carey in 1786. Like Augustine, Prosper hesitated. If grace is omnipotent, irresistible, omnipresent and inscrutable, then might it not be that for humans to choose to undertake missionary preaching was presumptuously to interfere with its workings? Prosper never asserted this in so many words, but one can sense the thought lurking there unformulated.

      Perhaps, in the last resort, western theologians like Augustine and Prosper could never quite forget that they were Romans. They might have had their doubts – indeed, we know that they did have their doubts – about the moral tradition which had corralled Christianity safely inside the city walls of the empire; but it was hard to break with the cultural habits of a millennium. It takes an outsider to think the unthinkable. However, what had still been unthinkable in the age of Augustine and Prosper had become absolutely thinkable by the time that Paulinus encountered Edwin two centuries later. What had happened in between to bring this about?