Charity after Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity in the Latin West

Through a unique blend of the personal and historiographical, Charity after Augustine explores why the Augustinian tradition's attempts to build solidarity or social cohesion in the societies of the Latin West have ended in disaster just as often as they have brought about justice. The conceit at the heart of the book is that the concrete practices of love or charity—almsgiving, works of mercy, good works—can tell us much about how religious leaders attempted to bind and hold communities together while also, in fits and starts with some startling reversions, attempting to expand and include others in a given community. The first part probes Augustine's understanding of how love is put into practice and the ways that this understanding informs a tradition of political action inspired by Christian concepts of love and enacted through practices of charity. In a second, more expansive part, Charity after Augustine turns to the ways in which the Benedictine tradition as illustrated by Gregory the Great and Bernard of Clairvaux receives this vision, invigorates it with new visions of care and leadership, and puts it into practice in radically different contexts from those of Augustine's age. At the heart of this book is an attempt to find a non-idealized vision of love that can inform thick, meaningful relations within a community that are not diluted by the incorporation of others. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Epigraph Acknowledgments Contents Prologue Religion, solidarity, and conflict Spirituality of Augustinian politics Political Augustinianism as Augustinianism 2 Solidarity and pastoral power Part I Historiographical Intervention I Harnack, Arendt, and the two Augustines Platonism, prayer, and politics 1 Charity and the Formation of Spiritual Judgment Platonism and Scripture Jerome and the pastoral challenge Ambrose as pastoral model Scripture and charity, preacher and community Spiritual judgment and pastoral power Learning to lead 2 Charity and the Limits of Unity Platonism and the world Weaponizing caritas Tractatus in Iohannis epistulam: love of God, love of the world Erfurt Sermons: how to do things with alms I Exclusion and embrace I The boundaries of solidarity 3 Charity and the Spirituality of Reciprocity Platonism and sacrifice De ciuitate Dei 10: purification and participation Enarrationes in Psalmos: enacting solidarity in the totus Christus De civitate Dei 21: how to do things with alms II Solidarity as forgiveness The leadership gap Part II Historiographical Intervention II Arquillière, Butler, and the politics of reform Benedict and the spirituality of politics 4 Benedict and the New Pastoral Arts Rediscovering Benedict’s abbot The abbot’s new power of discernment Socializing abbatial love Whiter Benedictine pastoral power? 5 Gregory the Great and Charity’s Professional Demands Contemplatives in charge Sacred leaders, civic functions Two loves, two lives Exclusion and embrace II The new logic of pastoral power 6 Bernard of Clairvaux and the Fragmentation of Charity Disruptions of grace Benedictus secundus Affective and active caritas The limits of unity: Lay Brothers and Templars The limits of love Epilogue Prayer, charity, and the pursuit of solidarity Solidarity and the challenge of leadership Solidarity and the tasks of theology Bibliography Index