Abstract

Augustine’s City of God (412-426/427 CE) is only nominally a book on cities. Inspired by a historical event, the City of God’s project corresponds to the full-scale historicisation of a long-established theological-political trope within which space, in general, and urban space, in particular, seem to play a negligible role. Is this merely because Augustine’s two cities are only ‘allegorically (mystice)’ such? Aim of this paper is not to reinvent the wheel by ascertaining that Augustine resorts to a conventional imagery in order to visualize the way in which a human dichotomy takes shape and runs through the ages. My intention is rather: (a) to investigate the actual presence and significance of city-spaces in the City of God; (b) to apply the research programme of “urban religion” to the material provided by the book; (c) to verify whether and to what extent the Lefebvrian concept of “non-city” fits the post-urban reality of Augustine’s heavenly civitas.