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The idea of Christendom, a domain where Christian politics and ecclesiology entwined, captivated the medieval imagination. Yet Augustine, whose thought (especially as expounded in his massive City of God) dominated the Middle Ages, never advocated such a system. Orosius, one of his students, did.

When Augustine began work on City of God, in 412, Rome was suffering under its first hostile occupation in centuries. Some disillusioned Roman citizens blamed Christians and their God, who seemed less able to defend the city than the old pagan gods had been. Augustine refutes this claim in City of God, especially the first five books.

The invasion of Rome drove many citizens to seek refuge in comparatively calm northern Africa, among them a young scholar named Orosius. Augustine welcomed him, describing him in a letter as a "young man … who is in the bond of the Catholic peace a brother, in the point of age a son, and in honor a fellow presbyter—a man of quick understanding, ready speech, and burning zeal, desiring to be in the Lord's house a vessel rendering useful service."

Orosius stayed with Augustine for about a year. Augustine was at the time busy working on City of God, combating the Pelagian heresy, and leading a large congregation. These duties left him no time to write a detailed, direct attack (beyond book three of City of God) on pagans and their nostalgia for a golden age before the rise of Christianity. So, according to Orosius, Augustine asked his protégé to mount the assault:

"You [Augustine] bade me, therefore, discover from all the available data of histories and annals whatever instances past ages have afforded of the burdens of war, the ravages of disease, the horrors of famine, of terrible earthquakes, extraordinary floods, dreadful eruptions of fire, thunderbolts and hailstorms, and also instances of the cruel miseries caused by parricides [familial murders] and disgusting crimes."

As requested, Orosius described plenty of burdens, ravages, and horrors in his Seven Books of History Against the Pagans. But he also not-so-subtly deviated from his mentor's view of political history. In earthly governments, where Augustine saw a gray mixture of human impurities and God's holiness, Orosius found evil blackness and holy light. Christian Rome, later revived as Christendom and the Holy Roman Empire, basked in the latter.

Augustine was not so enamored with Rome. Though he did consider it the pinnacle of civilization to date, he did not believe that perfection could be reached this side of heaven—certainly not in Rome.

In book five of City of God, Augustine demolishes Roman ideas of glory:

"As far as I can see, the distinction between victors and vanquished has not the slightest importance for security, for moral standards, or even for human dignity. It is merely a matter of the arrogance of human glory, the coin in which these men 'received their reward,' who were on fire with unlimited lust for glory, and waged their wars of burning fury.

"Is it the case that the conqueror's lands are exempt from taxes? Have the victors access to knowledge forbidden to the others? Are there not many senators in other lands, who do not know Rome even by sight? Take away national complacency, and what are all men but simply men? If the perverse standards of the world would allow men to receive honors proportional to their deserts, even so the honor of men should not be accounted an important matter; smoke has no weight. …

"That City [heaven], in which it has been promised that we shall reign, differs from this earthly city as widely as the sky from the earth, life eternal from temporal joy, substantial glory from empty praises, the society of angels from the society of men, the light of the Maker of the sun and moon from the light of the sun and moon."

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