“St Augustine, it would be generally agreed, has had a greater influence upon the history of dogma and upon religious thought and sentiment in Western Christendom than any other writer outside the canon of Scripture. It is easy to find at least one reason for this in the circumstances of the age during which his life was passed. From A.D. 350 till about A.D. 500 the vital powers of the ancient civilization were steadily declining, while at the same time the church was coming to social maturity with a number of insistent needs and demands which had not made themselves felt until full freedom of action had been attained. This period was followed by another, some 500 years in length, in which intellectual life at the higher levels was all but extinct in the West, and this epoch in its turn by one in which an adolescent Europe turned avidly for mental food to the masters nearest to hand and latest in time, the Latin writers of the imperial decline, who alone were available in the libraries of the age. These circumstances gave great importance and a new significance to a scattered group of teachers who had been the last to absorb the message of the ancient world while it was still to be heard, and who had therefore been the last to hand on the legacy of the past…”
David Knowles The Evolution of Medieval Thought [the metaphor of an “adolescent Europe” deserves attention but not respect].