7. Jerusalem: St. Augustine

Perhaps no individual after Paul exercised an influence on t he history of Christianity comparable to that of Augustine (354- 430). Beyond a doubt the greatest of the Latin Church fathers, he lived during the years when the formative period of the Christian Church was drawing to its close. By the time of his death, the polity, the doctrine, and many of the practices which the Western Church was to carry into the Middle Ages were already clearly recognizable, if not finally set. It was the contribution of Augustine, during the last half of a long and eventful life, to sharpen, expound, and expand upon so many different aspects of the Christian faith and in such a convincing (though sometimes inconsistent) way that there was no significant restatement of Roman Catholic doctrine for more than eight hundred years after his death. When the early Protestants of the sixteenth century wished to return to what they held to be true Christianity, they did so through Augustine. [excerpt

7. The Making of France as a National State

The west Frankish kingdom of Charles the Bald, which he had received in 843 as his portion of his grandfather\u27s great empire, is geographically the genesis of modern France. In the century of disorder and confusion following the partition of Charlemagne\u27s realm into three kingdoms, government fell into the hands of powerful vassals. From the first, therefore, great lords in France exercised the functions of independent rulers. In 987 they chose one of the weaker of their number, Hugh Capet (987-996), to be king. He and his successors faced two great problems in establishing nationhood in France: how to recover and unite the territories by wrestling control of the land from the great barons; and how to create and develop an effective central government. [excerpt