Abstract

In his important book, Les métamorphoses de la cité de Dieu (1952), Étienne Gilson mentions on one occasion «Augustine’s anti-racism», and he briefly quotes De civitate Dei, book 16, chapter 8. So it seems necessary to study in detail this difficult (and often neglected) Augustinian chapter, which deals with several wonderous ethnic groups described by Pliny the Elder. For Augustine, Adam is the one ancestor of every country’s people, even if this people possesses extremely strange physical features. What counts is to be a rational being, even if one has an unusual body. Augustine’s anti-racism is one aspect of his rationalism, his universalism, and his faith in God the Creator