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Podcast: New Books in Italian Studies
Episode: Toni Alimi, "Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Description: Augustine believed that slavery is permissible, but to understand why, we must situate him in his late antique Roman intellectual context. Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics (Princeton UP, 2024) provides a major reassessment of this monumental figure in the Western religious and political tradition, tracing the remarkably close connections between Augustine’s understanding of slavery and his broader thought.Augustine is most often read through the lens of Greek philosophy and the theology of Christian writers such as Paul and Ambrose, yet his debt to Roman thought is seldom appreciated. Toni Alimi remi...