The reception of Augustinian soteriology at the court of Theodoric

Abstract

The sanction of the council of Orange of 529, impelled by Caesarius of Arles and endorsed by Bonifacius II, after a complicated succession in Rome, with the death of Felix IV and the dispute for the papal inheritance between Goths and Byzantines, crystallizes the dogmatic drifts that had been developing from the feverish questions to the authority of the bishop of Hippo, irradiated especially from the centers of monastic discipline installed in southern Gaul, i. e., Marseille and Lérins, and North Africa. In this frame, it seems interesting to observe the reach of the Augustinian influence, several decades after his own death, on the literary production of the most conspicuous members of the Roman intelligentsia at the service of the Ostrogothic court.