II.—Contemporary History.

The references in this Section, where numbers alone are given, are to the date A. D.

It seems desirable to prefix to this Introduction some account of the times of St. Jerome. General and ecclesiastical history must not be kept too far apart.

Jerome was born in the troubled times which followed the death of Constantine (337), and before Constantius became sole Emperor (353). He was still a schoolboy during the reign of Julian (361–63), and when he heard of his death. During his student life at Rome, Jovian and Valentinian were Emperors, and at Treves, where he next sojourned, the latter Emperor held his court. His first letter refers to a scene in which Ambrose, then Prefect of Liguria, seems to have taken part (370), and his settlement at Aquileia synchronises with the law of Valentinian restraining legacies to the clergy (370). He went to the East in the year of the death of Athanasius (373), and during his stay in the desert and at Antioch (374-80) occurred the death of Valentinian, the defeat and death of his brother Valens in the battle of Adrianople, the elevation of Theodosius to the purple, and the call of Gregory Nazianzen to Constantinople. He was ordained by Paulinus, one of the three Bishops of Antioch, and studied under Apollinaris, thus touching on both the chief points for which the Council of Constantinople was called (381). At that Council he was probably present, being, as stated above, a disciple of its president, Gregory Nazianzen. He was present also at the Western Council held the next year in Rome under Pope Damasus, whose trusted counsellor he became (pp. 233, 255). His later life, spent at Bethlehem (386–420), witnessed the division of the Empire between the sons of Theodosius, the fall of the Prefect Rufinus (p. 174), to whom Jerome had been denounced, the triumph of Stilicho and his death (at which he weakly rejoiced, p. 237), Alaric’s sack of Rome (410) and his death, the revolt of Heraclian, the marriage of Alaric’s successor, Adolphus, with the Emperor’s sister, Galla Placidia, and the death of Arcadius (408); in ecclesiastical matters, it witnessed the rise of Chrysostom (398) and his exile (403) and death (407), the condemnation of Origenism (400), and the Pelagian controversy (415). It is of this period that we are now to give a sketch.

The Emperor Constantius “may be dismissed,” says Gibbon, “with the remark that he inherited the defects without the abilities of his father.” He died in Cilicia on November 3, 361; he had been stained in his youth by the blood of nine of his near relatives; he had fallen early under the dominion of the eunuchs of his palace; and he had done little for the defence of the empire. In ecclesiastical matters he had favoured the Arian cause, and had banished the orthodox Bishops of the principal sees, and had visited Athanasius of Alexandria with his especial displeasure. His jealousy of his cousin Julian, who had risen to fame by his just and vigorous administration and by his victories over the Germans, led him into acts which provoked the legions of Gaul and caused them to hail Julian as their Emperor. His overtures of peace were rejected by Constantius; he marched rapidly toward Constantinople, and Constantius, leaving the Persian war in which he was engaged, turned westward to meet him. The death of Constantius saved the world from civil war.

Julian’s accession was hailed by all who felt the need of a strong ruler; and his first measures were just and tolerant. He recalled from exile the Bishops whom Constantius had banished; his private life was virtuous, and his love of learning endeared him to some of the best of his subjects. But his contempt of Christianity made him first impatient and then a persecutor. He forbade Christians, or Galileans as he called them, to teach in the schools, or to follow the learned professions; he restored Paganism, though it was observed that the Paganism he introduced was in many ways modified by Christian influence; and he favoured the Jews and wished them to rebuild their temple at Jerusalem. What the result of his retrogressive policy would have been it is hard to say. He died in a skirmish in the Persian war, on June 26, 363.

Jovian, who succeeded him, was a Christian; and his election showed that the anti- Christian policy of Julian had been without effect. He proclaimed a complete toleration, but died before reaching Constantinople, only six months after his election.

Valentinian, his successor, was an orthodox Christian, his brother Valens, whom he associated with himself, an Arian. Valentinian established his court at Treves, and successfully kept back the barbarians. Thither in 366 Jerome went for a time, and he describes the curious customs of the tribes whom he saw there (Against Jovinian, ii. 7, p. 394). The Emperors proclaimed toleration, which extended even to the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries. But their inquisitorial and cruel treatment of all suspected of magic arts had a repressive effect upon learning. Their foundation of schools and endowment of physicians for the poorer citizens show that the hopes of social improvement were not extinguished. Yet the state of society in Rome and in other large cities, as given at this time by Ammianus Marcellinus (cxiv. 6, xxviii. 4. See Gibbon, iv. 77. Ed. Milman & Smith), reveals to us the causes of the fall of Rome.

In the reign of Valentinian many ecclesiastical events of great importance took place. The election of Damasus to the Popedom in 366, when the rival factions of Damasus and Ursinus filled the whole city with their conflict, and churches were stormed and strewed with the slain, showed how important the Bishopric of Rome had become. “If you would make me Pope, perhaps I might become a Christian,” said Prætextatus, the worshipper of the old gods, to Damasus, who wished to convert him (see p. 428). The law of Valentinian forbidding legacies to be made to the clergy shows also their wealth and deterioration (p. 92). But this reign produced some of the greatest Bishops and leaders whom the Church has known. Athanasius died in 373. Ambrose became Bishop of Milan in 374. Basil was Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia from 370 to 379.

Meanwhile, the reign of Valens in the East was unsuccessful, and ended in a great disaster. The Visigoths, and Ostrogoths, or Gruthungi, pressed by the Huns, implored permission to cross the Danube from their settlements in Dacia and to be allowed to cultivate the waste lands of Thrace and Asia Minor. This was conceded to them; but they were ill treated and cajoled, and at last asserted their rights by force; and the Emperor, who attacked them near Adrianople, was defeated and slain, and his army destroyed (378). The Goths were now a formidable force within the Empire. It was in the year before the death of Valens (377) that Stridon, the birth-place of Jerome, was destroyed.

Valentinian had died in 375, leaving two sons, Gratian, an accomplished youth of eighteen, who became Emperor of Gaul and the West, and Valentinian II., then a child, who was nominal Emperor of Italy and the central provinces, and who, with his mother Justina, had his residence at Milan. Gratian distinguished himself by his conduct of several expeditions against the German tribes beyond the Rhine, and, upon the death of his uncle Valens, nominated Theodosius to be Emperor of the East. But he afterwards yielded to idleness and frivolous pleasure, and in 383 was murdered by the agents of the usurper Maximus.

Theodosius, the son of the elder Theodosius, who had recovered Britain and Africa for the Empire, but had on a false accusation been put to death at Carthage, was called to the Empire from his retirement in Spain. He showed himself a great and capable ruler. He took the Goths in detail and gradually dispossessed them. He put down the usurper Maximus (383), and on the death of the young Valentinian (392) fought against the usurper Eugenius, and became sole Emperor (394) in the year before his death. He reformed the laws, enacting the Theodosian Code. In his reign Paganism was finally suppressed. He caused a vote to be taken in the Roman Senate for the establishment of Christian worship and the suppression of Paganism. He destroyed the temples—the destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria in 389 being the most notable instance of this—and supported Ambrose in his vehement efforts for the suppression of Paganism. Though he loyally befriended the Empress Justina, who was an Arian, and her young son Valentinian II., he did not support their demand for the toleration of Arian worship at Milan which Ambrose had denied to them, and he suppressed Arianism throughout the Empire. To settle the doctrinal disputes raised by the teaching of Apollinaris, Bishop of the Syrian Laodicæa, who held that the Logos in Christ supplied the place of the human soul, and the disputed succession at Antioch, where the Episcopal throne was claimed by the Arian Vitalis, the Trinitarian but Arian-ordained Meletius, and Paulinus the champion of the uncompromising orthodoxy of the West, he summoned the Council of Constantinople, which met in 381. The President of the Council was Gregory Nazianzen, who had come to Constantinople in 379, and, partly through his own eloquence and other great powers, partly through the influence of Theodosius, had won his way from the position of minister of a single church, the Anastasis, to the Episcopal throne. The Egyptian Bishops opposed him and vainly endeavoured to foist in the Cynic Maximus into his place. The Council did not succeed in settling the dispute at Antioch, but they maintained the Nicene creed, and added to it all the articles after “I believe in the Holy Ghost.” The Council held at Rome in the following year (382), to which Jerome went with Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyprus, and Paulinus of Antioch (p. 255), contradicted that of Constantinople on the subject of the succession at Antioch, but agreed with it on the creed. Gregory Nazianzen soon after the Council resigned the Bishopric of Constantinople, and Damasus, Bishop of Rome, died in 384.

Theodosius was, like Henry II. of England, liable to violent accesses of passion. When the people of Antioch rose in insurrection in 387, and destroyed the busts of the Emperor, he gave an order that the city should be razed and reduced to the rank of a village, from which sentence he was only deterred by the entreaties of the Governor of the city and its Bishop, John Chrysostom. When a similar rising took place at Thessalonica in 390, he was not similarly appeased, but ordered that the people when summoned to the theatre should be massacred by his soldiers, and seven thousand men, women and children were thus put to death. Ambrose, on Theodosius’ coming to Milan, refused to admit him to the communion of the Church till he had undergone five months of penance and showed his repentance for his crime.

On the death of the young Valentinian in 391, Eugenius the rhetorician usurped the throne of the West. Justina fled to the court of Theodosius, who, after long preparations, marched against Eugenius, and defeated him at Aquileia in 394. Theodosius, however, did not long survive his rival. After this last success he gave himself up to ease and self-indulgence, and died 395.

The Empire was divided between the sons of Theodosius. Arcadius, who became Emperor of the East, was eighteen years of age, and Honorius, fourteen. Both were weak characters, ill suited to cope with the growing dangers of the Empire. Arcadius married Eudoxia, a woman of a worldly and violent disposition. Honorius married the daughter of Stilicho, the great semi-barbarian general, who was his cousin, having married Serena, the daughter of Honorius, brother to the great Theodosius. Arcadius’ minister, Rufinus, became so unbearable in his rapacity (see Jerome’s allusion to him, p. 447) that a tumult was raised against him and he was put to death (395). Honorius removed his court to Ravenna, among the pine forests of which he was more secure from invasion; and, so long as he was under the guidance of Stilicho, was able to live in security.

John Chrysostom became Bishop of Constantinople in 398, and by his sermons and ascetic discipline exerted a large influence. But intrigues were raised against him by Theophilus of Alexandria on account of his reception of the Long Monks, whom Theophilus had banished in his zeal against Origenism. And the Empress Eudoxia, whom his plain speaking had offended, endeavoured to work his ruin. He was banished, after having been once brought back to the capital by the entreaties of the people, in 404, and died in 407, having continued to exercise his influence over the Church generally from his exile at Comana in Pontus. His remains were brought to Constantinople thirty years later, and were welcomed by Theodosius II. and his consort Eudocia with tears of repentance for the fault of their predecessors. Arcadius died in 408, leaving as his heir the young Theodosius, then but seven years old. His daughter Pulcheria and the Prefect Anthemius administered the Empire successfully; the Huns, who had entered the Roman territory and encamped in Thrace, were persuaded to withdraw, and the Eastern Empire enjoyed peace during the remainder of the reign of Theodosius II.

Turning to ecclesiastical affairs, we find a certain calm settling down upon the Church after the Council of Constantinople, and an unwillingness to reopen the subjects of strife. Men used the name of heretic rather as something to frighten their opponents, and sought to identify opinions which they disliked with the Arianism of the past, which all alike condemned. There were much fewer Councils of Bishops and no General Council for fifty years (Ephesus, 431). But other subjects of dispute arose, the Christian community being saturated with Greek contentiousness. The first of these related to Origenism. The works of the great and original church teacher of Alexandria of the third century (~254) had been little studied for above a hundred years, when a new interest in them arose both in the East and the West. The earnest study of Scripture which led to the formation of the Vulgate, or translation from the original into the vulgar tongue of the Latin world, led to a wish to consult the greatest textual writer and interpreter of Scripture who had as yet appeared; and those who learned from his Bible work to admire him were led also to study his doctrinal views. It happened to Origen, as to many modern teachers, that his name came to be identified with one or two prominent doctrines; and, as men speak of Calvinism or Erastianism or Hegelianism, so they spoke of Origenism. The doctrines which they connected with Origen were taken from his most important work, the Περὶ ᾽Αρχῶν, “on First Principles.” They were mainly (1) his expressions relating to the subordination of the Son to the Father, and (2) his eschatology. As to the first of these, they took isolated expressions, such as, “The Son does not see the Father,” or, “the Son is darkness in comparison with the Father,” and they spoke of him as the father of Arius; as to the second, they fastened upon his speculative ideas, that the coming of men’s souls into this world was a fall from a previous state of being; that men may rise into an angelic state; that the material body is destined to pass away; and that in the consummation of all things all spiritual beings, including the fallen angels, will be schooled into obedience, so that the universe may be brought back into harmony. Men were incapable of entering into the general system of Origen, and still more of understanding his historical position. The Pope Anastasius who condemned him in 404 says plainly that he knows neither who Origen was nor when he lived (see Vol. iii. 433); and they consequently took his tenets in an absolute sense, and thought of him as denying the divinity of Christ, or the condemnation of the wicked, or the resurrection of the body. His views were most widely spread in Egypt, where the contrary tendency of Anthropomorphism, that is, the conception of God as the subject of human properties and passions, was also widely prevalent. Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, at first was generally favourable to Origen, as was also Jerome; but, through various causes, not unmixed with personal feeling, he turned against Origenism in a fanatical and persecuting temper. He procured the condemnation of Origenism by the Bishops of Egypt, Syria, and Cyprus, and also by those of Rome and Italy; and he pursued those who had fled from his persecution to Constantinople, and branded Chrysostom, who had receive them, as a heretic. In all this he was aided by Jerome, who translated his missives into Latin (see Letters 86 to 100, 113 and 114). But the whole matter was transacted without any Council being called; the Bishops were taken as speaking the general sentiment, and their decisions were reinforced by a decree of the Emperors (400).

The second controversy (which also was disposed of without any General Council) was that of Pelagianism. Pelagius and Cælestius, monks of Britain, had come to Rome in 409, and maintained the doctrine of Free Will and the possibility of a man living without sin, against the Augustinian doctrine of Grace, which asserted the helplessness of man and issued in absolute predestinarianism. They passed into Africa with the crowds who were escaping from Alaric’s invasion, and there confronted the influence of Augustin. Condemned by a Council at Carthage in 413, they passed into Palestine, and procured recognition from Councils held at Jerusalem and Diospolis in 415, notwithstanding the presence of Orosius, Augustin’s friend, and the accusations of the Gaulish Bishops, Heros and Lazarus. Jerome was invited to write against them (pp. 272, 279), and their followers rose against him and burnt his monasteries (p. 280, Augustin De Gest. Pel. c. 66), after which they visited Ephesus and Rome, and were at first received by the Pope Zosimus; and several Bishops, of whom the chief was Julian of Eclana, espoused their cause. But Augustin’s influence prevailed in the West, while in the East little interest was taken in a controversy which was humanistic rather than strictly theological, and men’s minds were being drawn to the questions of Christology, which led to the Nestorian controversy and the Council of Ephesus (431).

The forces of the barbarians, which in the reign of Valens had threatened Constantinople, were diverted to the West in the reign of the sons of Theodosius. Those who remained within the boundaries of the Empire imbibed something of Roman civilisation, and, in many cases, became servants of Rome; and, as the subjects of the Empire withdrew through love of luxury from military duties, the power of the barbarians enlisted as mercenaries increased. Alaric, who now rose to power, occupied an ambiguous position. He marched with his Gothic army into Greece (396), and, being a Christian, thought himself justified in plundering the historic fanes of the old religion. He was attacked by Stilicho near the Isthmus of Corinth, and defeated, but he contrived to transport his army across the gulf and to take possession of Epiris (397), and the ministers of Arcadius thought it prudent to make peace with him. In 398 he became at once Master-General of Illyricum and King of the Visigoths; and, his rights not being respected by the Emperor of the West, he invaded the North of Italy. He was vanquished by Stilicho in the battles of Pollentia and Verona (403); but the conqueror, who well knew the increasing weakness of Rome, made peace with Alaric and acknowledged his official position. Alaric retreated for a time, but another barbarian invader, Radagaisus or Radaghast, with a mixed host of Vandals, Suevi, and Burgundians, forced his way to Florence. He was there met by Stilicho who gained over him his last great victory on the heights of Fiesole (406). The policy of conciliation adopted by Stilicho might have converted Alaric and his Goths into the guards of the Empire; but his action was disowned, and he was treated as a traitor and put to death in 408. Then Alaric advanced to the attack upon Rome. He was induced by fair promises to raise the siege; but, finding that no faith could be placed in the court of Ravenna, he renewed the siege, and took the city on August 26, 410. The only redeeming feature in the terrible destruction which ensued was the respect of the Goths for the Christian religion. They spared the clergy and the churches and those who had taken refuge in them; and even the rich plate and ornaments of divine worship were held sacred from their rapacity. But the knell of Roman greatness had been sounded, and the end of the Empire was near at hand. Alaric on leaving Rome ravaged Italy. He marched to Rhegium, the flames of which Rufinus saw from the opposite coast while he wrote his Commentary on the Book of Numbers (Vol. iii. p. 568); but his attempt to cross into Sicily was frustrated by a storm, and he himself died before the year of the sack of Rome had closed. His successor, Adolphus, made peace with Rome, and dared to ask for the hand of Galla Placidia, the sister of Honorius. The King of the Goths was accepted as the brother-in-law of the Roman Emperor.

The Empire of the West might now be compared to a ship heaving to and fro in a troubled sea, encompassed by enemies and without captain or rudder. Britain had revolted in 409. From 409 to 413 Gaul was a prey to revolutions, and the usurper Constantine was with difficulty overcome by the Roman General Constantius, only to be followed by fresh usurpers, Jovinus, Sebastian, and Attalus. The Count Heraclian dared to invade Rome itself in 413, though defeat and death were the penalty. One by one the provinces of the Empire passed into the hands of the barbarians. The Goths settled in Aquitaine and in Spain; the Vandals turned down into Africa; the Burgundians settled in the East and North of France, and the Franks in the centre. The ruin of the Empire of the West was practically consummated at the time of Jerome’s death in 419, though sixty years of disaster and disgrace intervened before its final extinction.

Meanwhile the distressed condition of Italy had driven large numbers of persons, especially of the clergy and the upper classes of society, to take refuge in the East, so as almost to justify Thierry’s designation of the movement as an emigration to the Holy Land. Jerome and his friends received this tide of fugitives at Bethlehem, and corresponded with those left behind; and thus the evils of the time made the Solitary of the East the chief Doctor of the West.

III.—Life of Jerome.

The figures in parentheses, when not otherwise indicated, refer to the pages in this volume.

For a full account of the Life, the translator must refer to an article (Hieronymus) written by him in Smith and Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography. A shorter statement may suffice here, since the chief sources of information are contained in this volume, and to these reference will be continually made.

Childhood and Youth. A.D. 345. Jerome was born at Stridon, near Aquileia, but in Pannonia, a place which was partially destroyed in the Gothic invasion of 377 (On Illustrious Men, 135, Vol. iii. p. 304). Jerome’s own property, however, remained, though in a ruinous state, in 397 (140). His father Eusebius (Ill. Men, as above) and his mother were Catholic Christians (492), but he was not baptised in infancy. The family was moderately wealthy, possessing houses (140) and slaves (Apol. i. 30, Vol. iii. p. 498), and was intimate with the richer family from which sprang Bonosus, Jerome’s foster brother and friend (6). The parents were living in 373 when Jerome first went to the East (35), but probably died at the destruction of Stridon. He had a brother, Paulinian, twenty years his junior (140, 173), and we read of a sister (8, 9), and an aunt named Castorina (13).

He received a good education, but declares that he was an idle boy (Vol. iii. 498). He was at a grammar school when the Emperor Julian died (Comm. on Habakkuk iii. 14) and soon after went to Rome with his friend Bonosus (6), where he studied rhetoric (at that time the all-embracing pursuit) under Ælius Donatus (Vol. iii. 491), and frequented 363 the law-courts (Comm. on Gal., ii. 13).

363–66. He fell into sin (9, 15, 78), but was drawn into the company of young Christians who on Sundays visited the tombs of the martyrs in the Catacombs (Com. on Ezek., ch. 40, v. 5), and is believed to have been baptised by the Pope Liberius in 366 (20). He was already a keen student, though as yet having little knowledge of Greek (Rufinus Apol. ii. 9, Vol. iii. p. 464), and had begun the acquisition of a library (35).

366–70. From Rome Jerome went with Bonosus to Gaul, passing, however, through Northern Italy, where they made acquaintance with Rufinus, probably at his native place, Concordia (Ep. v. 2, comp. with iii. 3, pp. 7, 11). He stayed at Treves (7), and travelled in its neighbourhood (394), and copied mss., and wrote a mystical Commentary on Obadiah (401).

Aquileia. Returning probably by Vercellæ (1) to Italy he was for three years at Aquileia, where he entered definitively upon the twin pursuits of his life, Scriptural study and the fostering of asceticism.

370–73. A society of congenial minds gathered round him, comprising Rufinus, Bonosus, Heliodorus (afterwards Bishop of Altinum), Chromatius (afterwards Bishop of Aquileia), and his brother Eusebius, and the Archdeacon Jovinus, the monk Chrysogonus, the sub-deacon Niceas, Innocentius, and Hylas, the freedman of the wealthy but ascetic Roman lady, Melania, together with Evagrius (afterwards Bishop of Antioch), who had come to Italy with Eusebius, Bishop of Vercellæ, on his return from exile. For the mention of these in various parts of Jerome’s works, the Index must be consulted. These ascetics did not form a monastery. There were as yet no Orders or Rules. The vow was merely a “purpose” (propositum) which each privately took on himself and the terms of which each man freely prescribed. The Greek word Monachus (Monk) was used, but only implied living a single or separate life. Some were hermits (5, 9, 247), some lived in cities (121, 250). Jovinian was a monk, though antiascetic (378); Heliodorus (91) and John of Jerusalem (174) were monks, though Bishops. Some members of the ascetic society at Aquileia may have resided in the same house; but there was no cenobitic discipline. Jerome visited Stridon and the neighbouring town of Æmona (12), and perhaps resided at his native place for a time, but he complains of the worldliness of the people of his native town and of the opposition of their Bishop, Lupicinus (8 n. 10). The friends at Aquileia were united in the closest friendship.

373. Rufinus’ baptism (7, Ruf. Ap. i. 4, Vol. iii. 436) and the writing of Jerome's first letter on “the woman seven times struck with the axe” are the only incidents which have come down to us of this period. We only know that the society was broken up by some event which Jerome speaks of as “a sudden storm,” and “a monstrous rending asunder” (5).

Jerome determined on going to the East with Evagrius and Heliodorus; Innocentius, Niceas, and Hylas accompanied him (1, 5, 6, 10). Chromatius, Eusebius, and Jovinus remained in Italy. Bonosus retired to an island in the Adriatic, where he lived the life of a hermit (5, 9). Rufinus went to Egypt and subsequently to Palestine in the company of Melania (6, 7). Jerome and his companions travelled through Thrace, Pontus, Bithynia, Galatia, at the capital of which (Ancyra) he appears to have stayed (497), Cappadocia, and Cilicia, to Antioch, their haven of rest (5). But they did not long remain together. Heliodorus made a journey to Jerusalem, where he was the guest of Florentius (6).

374. Jerome was in ill health, and at length, in the middle of Lent (36), fell into a fever of which he nearly died. To this illness belongs his anti-Ciceronian dream (36, Apol. ii. 6, Vol. iii. 462), which finally determined him to abandon secular learning and devote himself to sacred studies. The successive deaths of Innocentius and Hylas left Jerome alone with Evagrius, at whose country house he fell in with the ancient hermit Malchus (315), and was encouraged by him in the ascetic tendency. He hoped to see Rufinus, wrote to him through Florentius (4, 6), but he did not come; and he determined to embrace the life of solitude. Heliodorus had some thought of accompanying him, but, to Jerome’s great chagrin) felt the call to pastoral work to be the stronger, and returned to Italy (8, 13, 123).

The Desert. 374–379. Jerome spent the next five years in the Desert of Chalcis, to the east of Antioch (7). It was peopled by hermits who, though living apart for most purposes, were under some kind of authority (4, 21). Jerome wrote to their head, Theodosius, begging to be admitted into their company (4). His life while in the desert was one of rigorous penance, of tears and groans alternating with spiritual ecstasy, and of temptations from the haunting memories of Roman life (24, 25); he lived in a cell or cavern; he earned his daily bread, and was clad in sackcloth (21, 24), but he was not wholly cut off from converse with men. He saw Evagrius frequently (7, 8); he wrote and received letters and books (7, 11); he learned Hebrew from a converted Jew (Ep. xviii. 10), and copied and translated the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Ill. Men, 2, 3, Vol. iii. 362), and his brother solitaries he found only too accessible (Ep. xvii. 3). Towards the close of his sojourn he became involved in the controversies then agitating the Church at Antioch, where Arian Vitalis, the orthodox but Arian-ordained Meletius, and the Western Paulinus disputed the possession of the bishopric (20). Jerome found himself beset with demands for a confession of faith in terms strange to his Western education (19, 20). He appealed to Pope Damasus for advice (19, 20); but he and his friends found his position intolerable. They would rather, he says, live among wild beasts than among Christians such as those about them. In the autumn of 378 he wrote to Marcus, then head of the eremite community, to say that he only begged for the “hospitality of the desert” for a few months: in the spring he would be gone (21).

379. Accordingly, in the spring of 379 he came to Antioch and attached himself to the party of Paulinus, the Western and orthodox Bishop, who ordained him presbyter, though he then and always afterwards declined the active ministry (446). He pursued his studies under the celebrated Apollinarius of Laodicæa, though not accepting his views (176), and wrote his “Dialogue against the Luciferians” (319–334).

Constantinople. 380. The next year Jerome went, with his Bishop, Paulinus, to Constantinople, and was there during the Second General Council, at which the views of his teacher, Apollinarius, were condemned, and sentence was passed in the cause of his Bishop. He placed himself under the teaching of Gregory Nazianzen (80, 93, 357; Ill. Men, 117), and became acquainted with Gregory of Nyssa (Ill. Men, 128); he translated the Chronicle of Eusebius and dedicated it to Vincentius and Gallienus, the former of whom became henceforward his companion (483, 444–446); he imbibed his admiration for Origen, translating his Homilies on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and writing to Damasus on the meaning given by Origen to the Seraphim in Is. vi. (22).

381. These literary labours were carried on under the disadvantage of a weakness of the eyes, from which he henceforward constantly suffered. But there is in his writings not a single reference to the Council of Constantinople, and only cursory references to that held the next year at Rome, in which he was certainly called to take part (233; Ruf. Epil. to Pamph., Vol. iii. 426, 513).

Rome. 382–5. He went to Rome with his Bishop, Paulinus, and with Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus. At the Council which was there held he was present as a learned man whose help the Pope required. There is no ground for the notion that he became his official secretary. But for the two main objects of Jerome’s life his sojourn in Rome presented great opportunities. Damasus thoroughly appreciated his eminence as a biblical scholar. He constantly sent him questions, the replies to which form short exegetical treatises, such as those reckoned among Jerome’s letters on the word Hosanna and the Prodigal Son. It was also for Pope Damasus that he undertook a revised version of the Psalms, a version which was used in the Roman Church for more than eleven centuries (492, 494), and also a revised version of the New Testament, the preface to which is of much critical value (487, 488; see also p. 357, where a whole clause in 1 Cor. vii. 35 is said to have been omitted in the old version because of the difficulty of translation). He further began the collation of the various texts of the LXX. and the other Greek versions of the Old Testament, and began to form the convictions which afterwards led to his translation direct from the Hebrew (484). These biblical studies made him acquainted with the works of Origen, and he conceived a great and almost passionate admiration for that “brazen-hearted” (Chalchenterus) worker and teacher of the Church (46), and he permitted himself to use expressions too indiscriminate in praise of him and too contemptuous towards his adversaries, which were afterwards thrown in his teeth (Ruf. Ap. ii. 14, Vol. iii. 467).

For the promotion of asceticism he found in Rome a congenial soil. Epiphanius, him- self the pupil of the hermits Hesychias and Hilarion (Sozom. vi. 32, Vol. ii. 369, 370), was the guest of the noble and wealthy lady Paula, the heiress of the Æmilian race (196), who was already disposed to the ascetic life. To the circle of her family and friends Jerome was soon admitted, and she became his devoted disciple and friend during the remainder of her life (Letter cviii.). Her son, Toxotius, and her daughters, Blesilla, the young widow (47–49), Paulina, the wife of Jerome’s friend, the ascetic Senator Pammachius (135), and Julia Eustochium (196), each in special ways affected the life of Jerome. Her friends, Marcella and Principia (253), Asella (42, 58), Lea (42), Furia and Titiana, Marcellina and Felicitas (60) and Fabiola, all of them belonging to the highest Roman families, formed a circle of renuntiants who sought refuge in the ascetic life from the wastefulness and immorality of those of their own quality. Marcella’s house on the Aventine was their meeting place (41, 58). There they prayed and sang psalms in the Hebrew, which they had learned for the purpose (210), and read the Scriptures under the guidance of their teacher (41, 255), who wrote for them many of his expository letters, whose ascetic writings they committed to memory, and whose private letters to them (Letters xxiii.–xlvi.) reveal the various phases of the new Roman and Christian life. These are concentrated in the Treatise on the Preservation of Virginity which he addressed to Eustochium (Letter xxii.). This period also produced the first of Jerome’s controversial treatises, that against Helvidius on the perpetual virginity of Mary (334–346).

384–5. This congenial scene of activity and friendship was broken up by the death of Damasus. The new Pope, Siricius, to whom many had thought of Jerome as a rival (59), was without sympathy for him: he had offended almost every class of the community by his unrestrained satire (Letters xxii., xl., liv., etc.): he had awakened suspicion by his over praise of Origen (46); and at the funeral of Blesilla, whose end was believed to have been hastened by the hard life enjoined upon her, the fury of the people was excited against Jerome and the cry was raised “The monks to the Tiber!” (53). He felt that he was vainly trying to “sing the Lord’s song in a strange land” (60) and he resolved to leave Rome for ever and to seek a retreat in Palestine. His departure in August and the feelings excited by it are described in a passage in his Apology against Rufinus (Ap. iii. 22, Vol. iii. 530) and in his letter to Asella (Letter xlv.) written at the moment of his embarkation at Ostia.

385–6. Jerome sailed with Vincentius and with his brother Paulinian (Vol. iii. 530 as above) direct to Antioch. Paula and Eustochium, leaving the other members of their family, went to Cyprus to see Epiphanius; and the two parties united at Antioch (198). Thence they passed through Palestine and Jerusalem, on to Egypt, where they visited the abode of the monks of Nitria (202) and became acquainted with Didymus, “the blind seer” of Alexandria (176): and they returned to Palestine in the autumn of 386, and settled at Bethlehem for the remainder of their lives.

Bethlehem, First Period. Jerome’s life at Bethlehem lasted thirty-four years. A monastery was built, of which he was the head, and a convent for women over which Paula and Eustochium successively presided (206), a church where all assembled (206, 292), and a hospice for pilgrims who came to visit the holy places from all parts of the world (140). These institutions were supported by the wealth of Paula until, through the profusion of her charities, she was so impoverished that she rather depended on Jerome and his brother, who sold the remains of their family property for their support (140). He lived in a cell, surrounded by his library, to which he constantly made additions (Ruf. Ap. ii. 8 (2), Vol. iii. 464). He lived on bread and vegetables (165), and speaks of his life as one of repentance and prayer (446), but no special austerities are mentioned in his writings, and he did not think piety increased by the absence of cleanliness (33, 34). He never officiated in the services (83), but was much absorbed in the cares (140) and discipline (Letter cxlvii.) of the monastery, and by the crowds of monks who came from all parts of the world (64, 65, 500). Sulpicius Severus (Dial. i. 8) tells us that when he was with him towards the close of his life, he had the charge of the parish of Bethlehem; and the presbyters associated with him certainly prepared candidates for baptism (446); but his call, as he often confesses, was not to the pastorate, but to the study (Letter cxii.). He had youths to whom he taught Latin classics (Ruf. Apol. ii. 8 (2), Vol. iii. 465); and he expounded the Scriptures daily to the brethren in the monastery (Apol. ii. 124, Vol. iii. 515). Sulpicius speaks of him as always reading or writing, never resting day or night. Translations, commentaries, controversial works, letters dealing with important subjects, flowed constantly from his pen, while the notes passing between him and Paula and Eustochium were without number (Ill. Men, 135, Vol. iii. 384), and every thing that he wrote was caught up by friends or by enemies and published (79). He worked amidst great distractions, not merely from the cares of the monasteries and the hospice, but from the need of entertaining persons of distinction, like Fabiola (161), from all parts of the world (153, 287, 161); from the need of replying to the letters brought by messengers from the most distant countries for those who sought advice of the renowned teacher (Letters cxvi.–cxxx.); from prolonged illnesses (188, 215); at times from poverty; from the panic of barbarian invasions (161, 252), and from the attacks of his enemies, who in the year 417 burned his monasteries (281, 282).

He spared no pains nor expense in the production of his works. He perfected his knowledge of Hebrew by the aid of a Jew who came to him like Nicodemus by night (176); he also learned Chaldee (493); and for special parts of his Bible work he obtained special aid from a distance (491, 494), obtaining funds, when his own had failed, from his old friends Chromatius and Heliodorus (492).

386–92. The list of his works during the first six years of his residence at Bethlehem comprises the completion of the Commentary on Ecclesiastes, and the translation of Didymus on the Holy Spirit; the Commentaries on Ephesians and Galatians, Titus and Philemon (498); a revision of the version of the New Testament begun in Rome; a Treatise on Psalms x.–xvi., and Translation of Origen on St. Luke and the Psalms; the Book on the Names of Hebrew Places, mainly translated from Eusebius; the Book of Hebrew Proper Names and that of Hebrew Questions on Genesis; the revision of his translation of the LXX., involving a comparison of Origen’s Hexapla; a considerable part of the Vulgate; the Lives of the hermits Malchus and Hilarion; and the Catalogue of Illustrious Church Writers. The only letter preserved to us of this period is that written in the name of Paula and Eustochium to invite Marcella to come to Palestine (60).

Bethlehem, Second Period. 392–405. The second period of Jerome’s stay at Bethlehem is the period of his most conspicuous activity, which was partly employed in the salutary work of finishing the Vulgate and in writing letters which rank among the finest of his compositions, but largely also in controversies, in which the worst parts of his character and influence are brought into prominence.

395, 398 and 404–5, 394–97. There were also great external hindrances to his work: the panic arising from the invasion of the Huns, on account of which the inmates of the monasteries had to leave their homes and prepare to embark at Joppa (161); there were long periods of ill health; and there was the quarrel with the Bishop of Jerusalem which led to a kind of excommunication of the monks of Bethlehem (446, 447).

The letters of this second period are those numbered 47 to 116. They comprise those to Nepotianus, nephew of Heliodorus, on the duties of the pastorate (89–96); that to Heliodorus, on the death of his nephew (123–131); that to Paulinus, the Roman Senator, afterwards Bishop of Nola, on his poem in praise of Theodosius, and on the study of Scripture (96–102); that to Furia, on the maintenance of widowhood (102–109); that to the Spanish noble Lucinius, who had sent scribes to copy Jerome’s works (151–154), and to his widow Theodora (154, 155); those to Abigaus, a blind Spanish presbyter (156, 157), and to Salvina, widow of Nebridius, and closely connected with the Emperor Theodosius (163–168); that to Amandus, the Roman presbyter, on a difficult case of conscience (149–151); the letter to Oceanus, defending the second marriage of a Spanish Bishop (141–146); the letter to Læta, wife of Toxotius, son of Paula, on the education of her infant daughter (189–195); and those gems of his writings, the sketches of the lives (Epitaphia) of Fabiola (157–163) and of Paula (195–212).

The Vulgate. 391–403. The work of Jerome’s life, the Vulgate version of the Scriptures, was completed in this period. The version which bore the name of Vulgate, the popular or vernacular version, in his day (44, 487–488) was a loose translation of the LXX., of which almost every copy varied from every other. His first effort, therefore, was to translate, or to revise the existing translations, from a correct version of the LXX. And this revised version he used in his familiar expositions, in the monastery (Apol. ii. 24, Vol. iii. 515), though a great part of it was lost even in his lifetime (280), and all that now remains of it is Job, the Psalms, and the Preface to the Books of Solomon (494). But even the most correct text of the LXX., as he saw at once, was insufficient. In Origen’s Hexapla the versions of Theodotion, Aquila, and Symmachus were given, together with two others called Quinta and Sexta, in parallel columns with the LXX. These constantly differed; and the only mode of deciding between them was by going back to the Hebrew—“Hebraica Veritas,” as he constantly terms it (80, 486, 494).

392. Accordingly, he set himself at once, in his settlement at Bethlehem, to the preliminary labours required for this task; and in the sketch of his works in the Catalogue (Vol. iii. 384; On Ill. Men, 135) he says: The New Testament I have restored according to the Greek original; the Old I have translated in accordance with the Hebrew.”

393. But no portion was as yet published. In the following year he published the prophets (80) and sent other portions of his Old Testament version to Marcella at Rome, keeping the rest shut up in his closet (80), and awaiting the judgment of his friends on the portions submitted to them. He purposed from the first to publish the whole, as we see from what he calls his “helmeted preface” to the Books of Samuel and of Kings (489). But it was published in fragments, according as he had leisure to give it a final revision, or according as other circumstances were favourable. The series of Prefaces (487–494) shows that some parts were written or revised in great haste (492, 494), some parts extorted from him by the importunity of his friends (488; see Apol. ii. 25, in Vol. iii. 515); that he was subjected to severe censures and misunderstanding, as to which he was extremely sensitive; that at times he so shrank from publicity that he wished his friends only to read it privately; that he was often, especially in the later portions, dependent on his friends for the provision of the copyists (492, 494). The order of publication can be traced. The Books of Samuel and of the Kings came first, then Job and the Prophets, Ezra and Nehemiah, and the Book of Genesis. Thus far he had proceeded in the year 393 when a break of three years occurred through external hindrances, of which the panic of the invasion of the Huns was the chief.

395. He then, at the entreaty of Chromatius and Heliodorus (492), completed the Books of Solomon, intending to proceed systematically to the end.

398. But illness intervened, after which he states that the first eight books were still wanting in the copies made for the Spaniard Lucinius (153);

403. nor was the publication resumed till five years later, when the remaining books from Exodus to Ruth and the Book of Esther were brought out (489, 491).

404. The whole was then collected, by others rather than by himself, and gradually superseded all other Latin versions, and, coupled with the version of the New Testament previously made, became the received, or Vulgate, edition of the Bible.

393–404. The second period of Jerome’s stay at Bethlehem is the period of his great controversies. These are no less than six in number. (1) That with Jovinian on ascetic practices. (2) That with the Origenists, in which he worked with Theophilus of Alexandria and the Western Bishops. (3) That with John, Bishop of Jerusalem. (4) That with Rufinus. (5) That with Vigilantius. (6) That with Augustin. These may be described somewhat cursorily, the reader being referred for a more detailed statement of them to the Letters and Treatises themselves and to the notices prefixed to them.

(1) Jovinian. Jovinian was a Roman monk or, rather, solitary (for many took private monastic vows without entering any order or monastery) who had perceived the danger of degrading the ordinary Christian life which lurked in the profession of asceticism. He was not, to judge by Jerome’s quotations from him (347), a man of superior ability; but there are no apparent grounds for the imputations which Jerome throws upon his character. He put off the monastic dress, and lived like other men; and, though he refused to marry, maintained his right as a Christian to do so. He argued that the conditions of virginity, marriage, and widowhood were equal in God’s sight, provided men lived in faith and piety; and that eating and fasting were indifferent if men gave God thanks. He seems to have had some influence, and it is stated that some who had made vows of virginity were led through his teaching marry. Certainly his views were condemned by the Pope Siricius, by Ambrose, and by Augustin.

393. He published a book in Rome, maintaining these opinions, and others of a more speculative character, which was sent to Jerome, and was at once answered by him in his treatise “Against Jovinian” (346–416). The more speculative matters he deals with calmly; but the anti-ascetic views he treats with violence and contempt. “These are the hissings of the old serpent; by these the dragon expelled man from Paradise.” His intemperateness, which threw contempt upon marriage, was severely blamed by his friends at Rome, who tried to stop the publication (79; see also Ruf. Apol. ii. 44, Vol. iii. 480); but he only replied by renewed expressions of derision, and, several years later, when he has occasion to refer to Jovinian, he says, “This man, after being condemned by the authority of the Roman Church, amidst his feasts of pheasants and swine’s flesh, I will not say gave up, but belched out, his life” (417).

(2) Origenism. 393–403. The second great controversy in which Jerome was engaged at this period relates to Origenism, about which a great controversy had arisen at Alexandria, leading to its condemnation by the Bishops of Palestine and Cyprus in the East, and by the Pope and the Bishop of Milan and others in the West.

The great church teacher of Alexandria in the third century was but little known in the West. Anastasius the Pope, in the year 399, declared that he neither knew who he was nor what he had written (Vol. iii. 433). Jerome, who had made acquaintance with his writings during his first sojourn in the East, conceived a strong admiration for him; he did not, indeed, accept all his views, as may be seen from the first letter in which he alludes to him (22); but on his coming to Rome he did all in his power to make him known. He was invited by Damasus to translate some of his works (485); and when he found ignorant condemnations passed upon him he praised him with his usual vehemence and without discrimination, even eulogizing the Πεπὶ ᾽Αρχῶν on which the subsequent controversy mainly turned (46; Ruf. Ap. ii. 13, Vol. iii. 467). He had also quoted without blame in his Commentary on the Ephesians statements such as those relating to the pre-existence of human souls and possible restoration of Satan (Ruf. Apol. i. 448, 454). But it was rather a literary enthusiasm and an admiration of original genius than an express consent to Origen’s system. His calm judgment in later years was, that his literary services to the Church were inestimable, but that his doctrinal views were to be read with the greatest caution, and that those specially impugned were heretical (176, 177, 238, 244). It must be allowed, however, that he appears in his earlier stage as the vehement panegyrist of Origen (46, 48), and in his later stage as his equally vehement condemner; and also that this change seems less the effect of conviction than of a fear of the imputation of heresy (Apol. iii. 33, Vol. iii. 535).

The monks in the deserts near Alexandria were divided, some holding Origenistic views, and some those of an opposite tendency and verging upon Anthropomorphism. Theophilus, the Bishop of Alexandria, at first sided with the Origenists, but afterwards turned against them, and became their relentless persecutor. During his former phase he was appealed to by John, Bishop of Jerusalem, in his controversy with Epiphanius and Jerome (427), and took his part so vehemently that he sent his confidant Isidore to Jerusalem, nominally to inquire, but really to crush out all opposition, as he stated in a letter to John (444). This letter fell into the hands of Jerome and his friends, and the intentions of Theophilus were frustrated. A period of suspicious silence followed (134); but when Theophilus had undergone his change he found a ready instrument in Jerome, who threw himself eagerly into the conflict (182–184), translated the encyclicals of Theophilus (185, 186, 189) which led to the condemnation of Origen in the East, and even his diatribe against St. John Chrysostom for receiving Isidore and his brethren, whom Theophilus now treated as his enemies (214). Jerome also, through his friends Pammachius, Marcella, and Eusebius (186, 256), procured the condemnation of Origen in the West.

(3) John of Jerusalem. The controversy with John of Jerusalem forms an episode in the more general controversy. John had been trained among the Origenistic ascetics, Epiphanius among the anti-Origenists. Jerome appears to have undergone no change in his sentiments as to Origen during the first period of his stay at Bethlehem [see his Preface to the Book of Hebrew Questions (486, 487) written in 388], and was on good terms with the Bishop of Jerusalem and with Rufinus, who was then living on the Mount of Olives.

393. But at the beginning of the second period a certain Aterbius came to Jerusalem and spread suspicion and alarm of heresy. Jerome, perhaps weakly, “gave him satisfaction” as to his faith (Apol. iii. 33, Vol. iii. 535), while by John and Rufinus he was treated as a busybody (id.). This produced the first estrangement, which was greatly increased by the visit of Epiphanius in the following year. The scenes which followed may be read in Jerome’s treatise, “Against John of Jerusalem” (430) and in Epiphanius’ letter translated by Jerome (83–85). Epiphanius was popular at Jerusalem, and after a scene in the church, in which he preached against Origenism and John against Anthropomorphism, a breach was made between the two prelates. Epiphanius came to stay at Bethlehem, and spoke of John as well nigh a heretic. John spoke of Epiphanius as “that old tard” (430). The monks of Bethlehem took part with Epiphanius; and he, to prevent their being deprived of clerical ministration by Bishop John, ordained Jerome’s brother Paulinian at his monastery of Ad in the diocese of Eleutheropolis. He was then only thirty years old, and was ordained against his will, and with the employment of force and even gagging (83). Epiphanius, returning to Cyprus, wrote to John a letter explaining his conduct (83–89) which was translated by Jerome, but which did little to allay the strife. John placed the monasteries, at least partially, under an interdict (446–447), and appealed to Rome and to Alexandria, and afterwards to Rufinus, the Pretorian Prefect at Constantinople (174, 447). Theophilus at first took John’s side vehemently; but the mission of his confidant Isidore miscarried (444, 445), and after some time his views of the situation changed and he made peace with Jerome and his friends.

397 or 398. John also was appeased; and Jerome, who had written a long and bitter account of the controversy in his treatise to Pammachius “Against John of Jerusalem” (424–447), seems suddenly to have let the whole matter drop; the treatise was not finished and was not published, and we read of the strife no more.

(4) Rufinus. 398–404. The quarrel with Jerome’s early friend Rufinus did not, like that with John pass away. Jerome had deeply loved Rufinus (4) and highly respected Melania in early days (5, 7, 53). He had spoken of Rufinus in his Chronicle for the year 378 as “insignis monachus” (Ruf. Ap. ii. 25, 26, Vol. iii. 471); we do not read of any estrangement till some years after his return to Palestine.

392. We do not, indeed, find the warm affection which we should expect in two intimate friends who meet after a long separation; and it is possible that Jerome’s omission of Rufinus’ name from his Catalogue of Church Writers may indicate a coolness on one side which was resented on the other. But they admit that their friendship remained (Ruf. Ap. ii. 8 (2), vol. iii. 465), and that there was frequent intercourse between the monks of Bethlehem and those of the Mount of Olives (id.).

393–394. The visit of Aterbius (Ap. iii. 33, Vol. iii. 535) and that of Epiphanius mark the time of estrangement. Rufinus was with Bishop John in the scenes in the Church of the Resurrection, and is mentioned in Epiphanius’ letter as a presbyter as to whose views he is paternally anxious (84-87). In the quarrel between John and Jerome Rufinus took decidedly the Bishop’s side (84, 430, compared with 250). Jerome’s mind grew full of suspicion, so that he even imputed to him that he had bribed some one in the monastery at Bethlehem to steal from the lodgings of Fabiola his translation of the letter of Epiphanius to John (Ap. iii. 4, Vol. iii. 521).

397. But when Rufinus was leaving Palestine, friendship was restored. They partook together of the Eucharist, and joined hands (Ap. iii. 33, Vol. iii. 535), and Jerome accompanied his friend some way upon his journey; but the reconciliation was short-lived. When in Rome, Rufinus prefixed to a translation of Origen’s Περὶ ᾽Αρχῶν a preface (168–170) which referred in laudatory terms to Jerome as his forerunner in this work, thus seeming to expose Jerome to the suspicions and condemnation which might be expected to fall on one who undertook such a work. This work was sent to Jerome by his friends Pammachius and Oceanus (175), together with a Preface written by Rufinus to a translation of the Apology for Origen by Pamphilus the Martyr. They spoke of the alarm excited at Rome by the translation of the Περὶ ᾽Αρχῶν, and their suspicions that the translation was so made as to veil the heresies contained in the original work; they begged that Jerome would translate the work as it stood in the original, and pointed out that his own reputation for orthodoxy was at stake (175). Jerome at once complied. He sent to them a literal translation of Origen’s work together with a letter describing the relation in which he had stood and still stood to Origen: he admired him as a biblical scholar, but had never accepted him as a dogmatic teacher (176, 177). He at the same time wrote a letter to Rufinus, couched in friendly terms, but remonstrating with him for the use he had made of his name (170). This letter, having been sent to Jerome’s friends at Rome, was kept back by them (Ap. i. 12, Vol. iii. 489) and not delivered to Rufinus, and thus the quarrel, which might have been allayed, became irreparable.

401–404. The further progress of the dispute is described in the notice prefixed to the Apologies of Jerome and Rufinus (Vol. iii. 434–5, 482, 518). It may suffice here to say that this disgraceful and unseemly wrangle between two well-known Christian teachers, conducted publicly before the whole Church, and breeding a hatred which Jerome continued to express even after Rufinus’ death (498, 500) has only one redeeming feature to the historian, namely, that it brings to our knowledge many instructive facts which would otherwise have lain hid.

396. (5) Vigilantius. The controversy with Vigilantius consists only of Jerome’s letter to him (131–133) and the treatise “against Vigilantius” (417–423). He had been originally introduced to Jerome by Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, who spoke of him in high terms (123). No questions arose between them during his stay at Bethlehem. He even spoke of Jerome at times with extravagant praise (132). But he appears to have had some connection with Rufinus (Ap. iii. 19, Vol. iii. 529), and Jerome accused him afterwards of having conveyed some mss. into the monastery at Bethlehem, probably from that on the Mount of Olives (Apol. iii. 5, 19, Vol. iii. 521, 529). Jerome afterwards heard a report that Vigilantius had written and spoken against him in various places (131), and had accused him of Origenism. To this his letter is a reply. The anti-ascetic writings of Vigilantius to which Jerome’s treatise is a reply have not come down to us. Gennadius (de Script. Eccl. 35) says that he was an ignorant man, but polished in words. But, whatever his ability or literary power, he was one of the few who were able to judge rightly of the ascetic and superstitious practices by which Christianity was being overlaid; and it is on this point that Jerome is most violent and contemptuous in his treatment of him. The notices prefixed to the Letter (131) and Treatise (417) will complete this statement.

394–404. (6) Augustin. The remaining controversy of this period is that with St. Augustin. The two men had at an earlier time had some friendly relations, and Alypius, Augustin’s friend, had stayed with Jerome at Bethlehem. But Augustin, then coadjutor Bishop of Hippo, in a letter to Jerome (112), found fault with some of his statements in his Commentary on the Galatians, to which, no doubt, his attention had been called by Alypius. Jerome had maintained that the scene in Gal. ii. in which St. Paul rebukes St. Peter for inconsistent compliances with Judaism, was a merely feigned dispute, arranged between the two Apostles in order to make the truth clear to the members of the Church. Augustin objects that this is practically imputing falsehood to the Apostles. He touched upon other points, such as the translation of Scripture and the doctrine of marriage, in a manner savouring of assumption, considering the high position of Jerome, who was also eight years his senior. Through a strange series of misadventures, which illustrate the difficulty of communications at that epoch, this letter was never delivered to Jerome till nine years after it was written. It fell into the hands of persons who copied it, and became known in the West. Jerome heard casually that it had been seen among his works in an island in the Adriatic. It appeared as if Augustin had wished to gain credit by attacking a well-known man behind his back. And this suspicion was hardly allayed by a second letter from Augustin, which partially explained what had occurred (140), or by a third, in which, in answer to a letter from Jerome sending some of his works and warning his correspondent that, if it came to blows, the result might be like that described in Virgil, where the old Entellus strikes down young Dares, Augustin criticises both severely and ignorantly Jerome’s great work of translating the Hebrew Scriptures. Jerome’s patience begins to fail (189). “Send me your original letter,” he says, “signed by your own hand, or else cease to attack me.” And he comments in his turn somewhat sharply on some of Augustin’s interpretations of the Psalms. It was only on the receipt of Augustin’s reply to this letter (214), couched in terms of deep respect, and deprecating any ill feeling between Christian friends, such as had arisen in the case of Rufinus, that Jerome finally answered the original letter, written ten years before, and received a letter which completely restored friendship. Henceforward they are at one. Letters pass freely between them; Augustin consults Jerome on the difficult question of the origin of souls (272, 283), and foregoes the expression of Traducianism, to which he is inclined, in deference to Jerome’s objections; and he consults him on the Pelagian question, and sends Orosius to sit at his feet. Jerome recognises that each has his proper gift, and gives a plenary adherence to all that Augustin teaches. Alypius, their original link, is joined with Augustin in the address of Jerome’s last letter to him (282); Paula, the grand-daughter of Jerome’s chief friend, is called by him the granddaughter of Augustin; and through this unity the families of Paula and Melania, which had been severed by the adherence of the one to Jerome and the other to Rufinus, are reunited by the coming of Pinianus and his wife, the younger Melania, from the church of Hippo to the convent at Bethlehem. The letters from which this episode is drawn are incorporated into the volume containing works of Augustin, and are not reprinted here. But no life of Jerome, however limited or unpretending, would be satisfactory without some account of the relations of the two great doctors of Latin Christianity.

Bethlehem, Third Period. 405–420. The last period of Jerome’s life was passed in the midst of privations, the loss of friends, and frequent illnesses. Paula had died. Jerome was poor (500, 214, 215) and often weak (498, 500). His eyesight failed (id.). He had enemies around him (261, 262) and in the high places of the Empire (237, 499). The barbarians were sweeping across the Empire (237, 500), some, like the Isaurians, threatening the North of Palestine (214) and even penetrating at one time to Southern Syria and Egypt (id.), while the main stream, after devastating Jerome’s native Dalmatia, passed on under Alaric to the sack of Rome.

410. Fugitives from Rome and Italy crowded to Bethlehem, adding greatly to Jerome’s labours (499, 500). It seemed as the end of the world were at hand (260). In the sack of Rome Pammachius and Marcella died (257, 500). Eustochium followed them eight years later. The controversy with the Pelagians led to the burning of the monasteries at Bethlehem, probably also to renewed estrangement of his Bishop, John of Jerusalem, and his successor Praylus.

417. But he continued his work with no abatement of ardour or vigour, as may be seen from the Prefaces to his later Commentaries (500, 501). He had still friends about him, Pinianus, Albina, Melania, and the younger Paula (Ep. cxliii.); a few survivors even in Rome, Oceanus and the younger Fabiola (252, 253); and men in many lands who honoured and consulted him, as is seen by his letters; and, above all, the friendship of Augustin. The letters of this period take a wider range than those going before, Jerome’s fame being now world-wide; their addresses embrace Dalmatia (220), Gaul (215), Rome (252, 253), and Africa (260, 261). Their contents will be best estimated from the notices prefixed to them; but we may mark as specially important the ascetic letter to Rusticus, on the solitary life (244), to Ageruchia, and those on perseverance in widowhood (230), and to Demetrias on the preservation of virginity (260–272), which contain vivid pictures of the life (233) and events (236, 237) of the time, and of the sack of Rome (237, 257); the Memoir, addressed to Principia, of Marcella, who died from her ill treatment in that great day of doom (253); the letter to Evangelus (288) containing Jerome’s view of the origin and mutual relations of the three orders of the Ministry; and that to Sabinianus, the lapsed Deacon, who had introduced disorder into the monasteries at Bethlehem (289–295).

Pelagianism. The only great controversy of this period is the Pelagian, in which Jerome seems to have engaged rather at the instance of others than on his own initiative. He shows some mildness in dealing with the Pelagians, and wishes more to win than to condemn them (449, 499); his temperament was not such as to incline him, like Augustin, to take an attitude of vehement hostility to the Pelagian tenets.

414–418. But Orosius came from North Africa, where the Council of Carthage had lately been held; and when, the next year, Pelagius and Cælestius came to Palestine, and Councils were held, first at Jerusalem under Bishop John, who was favourable to the reception of Pelagius, and subsequently at Diospolis, Palestine became the centre of the controversy.

416. Augustin from Africa and Ctesiphon from Rome appealed to him (272, 280); both Orosius and Pelagius quoted his words as making for them; and at length Jerome himself felt compelled to take the pen. He resorted in this his last controversial work, as in his first against the Luciferians, to the form of dialogue. The argument must be praised for its moderation, though it must be confessed that this is gained at the expense of liveliness; it was impossible for Jerome, as a “Synergist,” or believer in the co-operation of the human will with the divine, to throw himself into the fray with the eagerness of a convinced Predestinarian. But he does not scruple to brand Pelagius as a heretic; and to a heretic he would show no mercy (449). His treatise, notwithstanding its fine drawn argument, made him at once the leader of the orthodox party in the East, and the target for the enmity of their adversaries.

416–7. A crowd of Pelagian monks attacked the monasteries, slew some of their inmates, and burned or threw down the buildings, the tower in which Jerome had taken refuge alone escaping (Aug. de Gestis Pelag. 66). This violence, however, was checked by a strong letter from Pope Innocentius (280, 281) to Bishop John, who died soon after; and Jerome, to whom the Pope wrote at the same time (280), speaks of Augustin’s cause as triumphant (282), and of Pelagius, like another Catiline, having left the country, though Jerusalem remains in the hands of some hostile power which he speaks of under the name of Nebuchadnezzar (282). It cannot be said, however, that Jerome’s arguments produced much effect in the East. He was withstood by Theodore of Mopsuestia (see Migne’s Jerome, ii. 807–14) as “saying that men sin by nature, not by will”; and from the West also a treatise opposing his views was sent to him (282) by Annianus, a deacon of Celeda, to which he was never able to reply.

His Bible work during these last fifteen years consisted entirely of Commentaries on the Prophets. Those on the Minor Prophets were finished in 406; that on Daniel in 407; that on Isaiah in 408–10; that on Ezekiel in 410–14. That on Jeremiah up to ch. xxxii. occupied the remaining years. The Prefaces to these Commentaries {499–501) are full of interest, recording the sack of Rome (499, 500), the death of Rufinus (498, 500), and the rise of Pelagianism, while the Commentary on Ezekiel itself (Book ix.) speaks of the occupation of Rome by Heraclian. His failing health and eyesight (498, 500), the Pelagian Controversy, the other trials above mentioned (499) and the care of the monasteries and pilgrims (500, 501), increased by the death of Eustochium in 418, shortened his time for work, and his Commentary on Jeremiah was cut short at ch. xxxii. by his last illness. Yet his last work is full of energy and of his old controversial vigour.

The last year of his life is believed to have been occupied by a long illness, in which he was tended by the younger Paula and Melania. The Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine gives September 20, 420, as the day of his death. Many legends sprung up around his memory. His remains are said to have been transferred from the place where they were buried beside those of Paula and Eustochium, near the grotto of the Nativity, to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, and miracles to have been wrought at his tomb. His descriptions of hermit life in the desert no doubt gave rise to the tradition that he was always attended by a lion, as represented in painting and sculpture, especially in the well-known painting of Albert Dürer. With such traditions a historical work must not be burdened.

IV.—The Writings of Jerome.

The following is a list of the writings arranged under various heads, and showing the date of composition and the place held by each in the Edition of Vallarsi, the eleven volumes of which will be found in Migne’s Patrologia, vols. xxii. to xxx. The references are to the volumes of Jerome’s works (i.–xi.) in that edition.

I. Bible translations:

(1) From the Hebrew.—The Vulgate of the Old Testament, written at Bethlehem, begun 391, finished 404, vol. ix.

(2) From the Septuagint.—The Psalms as used at Rome, written in Rome, 383, and the Psalms as used in Gaul, written at Bethlehem about 388. These two are in parallel columns in vol. x. The Gallican Psaltery is collated with the Hebrew, and shows by obeli (†) the parts which are in the LXX. and not in the Hebrew, and by asterisks (*) the parts which are in the Hebrew and not in the Greek.

The Book of Job, forming a part of the translation of the LXX. made between 386 and 392 at Bethlehem, the rest of which was lost (Ep. 134), vol. x.

(3) From the Chaldee.—The Books of Tobit and Judith, Bethlehem, 398, vol. x.

(4) From the Greek.—The Vulgate version of the New Testament made at Rome between 382 and 385. The preface is only to the Gospels, but Jerome speaks of and quotes from his version of the other part also (De Vir. Ill. 135; Ep. 71 and 27), vol. x.

II. Commentaries:

(1) Original.—Ecclesiastes, vol. iii., Bethlehem, 388; Isaiah, vol. iv., Bethlehem, 410; Jeremiah i.–xxxii., 41, vol. iv., Bethlehem, 419; Ezekiel, vol. v., Bethlehem, 410–14; Daniel, vol. v., Bethlehem, 407; the Minor Prophets, vol. vi., Bethlehem, at various times between 391 and 406; Matthew, vol. vii., Bethlehem, 398; Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, Philemon, vol. vii, Bethlehem, 388.

(2) Translated from Origen.—Homilies on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, vol. v., Bethlehem, 381; on Luke, vol. vii., Bethlehem, 389; Canticles, vol. iii., Rome and Bethlehem, 385–87.

There is also a Commentary on Job, and a specimen of one on the Psalms, attributed to Jerome, vol. vii., and the translation of Origen’s Homilies on Isaiah, also attributed to him, vol. iv.

Books illustrative of Scripture:

(1) Book of Hebrew names, or Glossary of Proper Names in the Old Testament, Bethlehem, 388, vol. iii. 1.

(2) Book of Questions on Genesis, Bethlehem, 388, vol. iii. 301.

(3) A translation of Eusebius’ book on the sites and names of Hebrew places, Bethlehem, 388, vol. iii. 321.

(4) Translation of Didymus on the Holy Spirit, Rome and Bethlehem, 385–87, vol. ii. 105.

IV. Books on Church History and Controversy (all in vol. ii.):

(1) Book of Illustrious Men, or Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, Bethlehem, 392.

(2) Dialogue with a Luciferian, Antioch, 379.

(3) Lives of the Hermits: Paulus, Desert, 374; Malchus and Hilarion, Bethlehem, 390.

(4) Translation of the Rule of Pachomius, Bethlehem, 404.

(5) Books of ascetic controversy, against Helvidius, Rome, 304; against Jovinian, Bethlehem, 393; against Vigilantius, Bethlehem, 406.

(6) Books of personal controversy, against John, Bishop of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, 397 or 398; against Rufinus, i. and ii. 402, iii. 404.

(7) Dialogue with a Pelagian, Bethlehem, 416.

V. General History:

Translation of the Chronicle of Eusebius, with Jerome’s additions, vol. viii., Constantinople, 382.

VI. Personal:

The series of letters, vol. i. Ep. i., Aquileia, 311; 2–4, Antioch, 374; 5–17, Desert 374–79; 18, Constantinople, 381; 19–45, Rome, 382–85; 46–148, Bethlehem, 386–418.

The works attributed to Jerome, but not genuine, which are given in Vallarsi’s edition are: A breviary, commentary, and preface on the Psalms, vol. vii.; some Greek fragment and a lexicon of Hebrew names; the names of places in the Acts; the ten names of God; the benedictions of the patriarchs; the ten temptations in the desert; a commentary on the Song of Deborah; Hebrew Questions in Kings and Chronicles; an exposition of Job, vol. iii.; three letters in vol. i., and fifty-one in vol. xi., together with several miscellaneous writings in vol. xi. most of which are by Pelagius.

Bibliography.—The writings of Jerome were, on the whole, well preserved, owing to the great honour in which he was held, in the Middle Ages. Considering the number of the mss., the variations are not numerous. The Editio Princeps of the Letters and a few of the Treatises appeared in Rome in 1470, and another almost contemporaneous with this in Maintz (Schöffer), after which they were reprinted in Venice (1476), Rome (1479), Parma (1480), Nürenberg (1485), and in several other places. The Editio Princeps of the Commentaries appeared in Nürenberg in 1477, and was several times reprinted in other places; that of the Translation of Origen’s Homilies on St. Luke, etc., in Basle, 1475; that of the Lives of the Hermits in Nürenberg, 1476, and of the Chronicle at Milan in 1475.

But the true Editio Princeps, containing Jerome’s works as a whole, is that of Erasmus (Basle, 1516–20), who bestowed on it his great critical power, aided by his strong admiration for Jerome. He was assisted by Œcolampadius and other scholars. This held its ground till 1560, when an edition appeared by Marianus Victorius, afterwards Bishop of Rieti (Rome, Paulus Manutius), which enlarged the notes and corrected the text of Erasmus, but, like him, included many spurious writings. This edition was dedicated to Pius V. and Gregory XIII., and was the favourite edition of the Roman Church. In 1684 appeared the edition of Tribbechovius of Gotha (Frankfort and Leipzig) which embodied the emendations of critics up to that date, and was published at the expense of the Protestant Frederick, Duke of Saxony. In 1693 came the Benedictine edition of Martianay and Pouget (Paris), which gave the original text of the Vulgate and a new, though still very imperfect arrangement of the Letters and Treatises. But all previous editions were thrown into the shade by that of Dominic Vallarsi the learned priest of Verona (folio ed., Verona, 1734–42; quarto, Venice, 1766–72). In this edition the Treatises are separated from the Letters, and both Letters and Treatises are arranged in order of time, the dates and the process by which they are arrived at being clearly given. I have only in one or two instances found reason to alter Vallarsi’s dates. The explanatory notes, however, are not as complete as might be wished, and the references are often wrong or imperfect. This edition is reprinted by Migne, who marks the pages of it in large print in the text, and most modern writers refer to it alone, as has been done in this volume.

Literature.—Three short Lives of Jerome, composed in the Middle Ages by unknown authors (one of which was falsely attributed to Gennadius), are given by Vallarsi in his Prolegomena (vol. i. 175–214); one of these is said by Zockler to be by Sebastian of Monte Cassino. Another, written in the fourteenth century by John Andreas of Bologna, was printed at Basle in 1514; and a work by Lasserré was published at Paris in 1530, with a curious title, “La Vie de Monseigneur Sainct Hierome,” with “La Vie de Madame Saincte Paule”; and later works belonging to the uncritical region of thought were published later in Madrid by Bonadies in 1595, and by Cermellus in Ferrara (1648), the latter entirely made up of quotations from Jerome’s writings.

Meanwhile the critical faculty had been aroused. Erasmus and Marianus Victorius prefixed Lives of Jerome to their editions of his works in 1516 and 1565; and Baronius in his Annals and Du Pin in his Bibliotheque des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques (1686) brought to light additional facts. Martianay at the close of his edition of Jerome’s works published a Life, embodying many records of Jerome from the Fathers, but with many mistakes of chronology, some of which were rectified by Tillemont in his painstaking Mémoires (Paris, 1707) and by Ceillier in his Histoire des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques (Paris, 1742). The work of Sebastiano Dolci (Ancona, 1750) is entirely taken from Jerome’s own writings.

But in reference to the Life as to the Writings of Jerome a new epoch was made by Vallarsi in the Preface and the Life prefixed to his Edition of Jerome. Though somewhat dry, it is thoroughly trustworthy, and in Migne’s edition more accessible than any other to those who read Latin. The Bollandist Stilling (Acta Sanctorum, vol. viii., Antwerp, 1762), is less occupied with additions to our knowledge of the man and his works than with the honouring of the Saint. The work of the learned Dane, Engelstoft (1797), gives a more comprehensive estimate of Jerome’s historical position than any of his predecessors. The account of Jerome in Schrökh’s Ecclesiastical History (1786) and the articles of Cölln in Ersch and Grüber’s Encyclopädie and of Hagenbach in Herzog’s Real-Encyclopädie are excellent. In French we have the account of Jerome’s ascetic influence in Montalembert’s Monks of the West (Paris, 1861); and the Histoire de St. Jérome by Collombet (Paris, 1844) is useful in the appreciation of the personal and archæological part of the subject, though accepting with uncritical partisanship the polemical attitude of Jerome. We may add for English readers the articles Hieronymus in the Dictionaries of Greek and Roman Biography and of Christian Biography.

Our own generation has produced two excellent works: that of Dr. Otto Zöckler, Hieronymus, Sein Leben und Werken (Gotha, Perthes, 1865), and that of Amédée Thierry, Saint Jérome, la Société chrétienne à Rome et l’émigration romaine en terre sainte (Paris, 1867, originally published in the Revue des Deux Mondes). The former is a lucid, impartial, and comprehensive account of Jerome’s Life and Writings; the latter, a series of very vivid and interesting sketches of Jerome himself, his friends and his times, which, though generally accurate, is occasionally swayed from truth by imagination, and at times is betrayed by sympathy with the modern Roman Catholic system into mistakes of judgment. Both these writers give copious and enlightening extracts from Jerome’s writings in the original; but the value of those of Thierry is lessened by the references being to the ill-arranged edition of Martianay instead of that of Vallarsi.

It will be sufficiently obvious why it has been impossible to include all the works of Jerome in the present translation, but a few explanations may be desirable.

An exact translation of the Vulgate would serve no good purpose; and, if made, would naturally form part of a series designed to illustrate the criticism of the Scriptures.

The Commentaries and works illustrative of the Scriptures would by themselves form two volumes of equal size with the present. Though they contain much that is interesting—the opinions of various writers, such as Origen, Apollinarius, Gregory Nazianzen, or Didymus, a few celebrated passages, such as that which caused the controversy between Jerome and Augustin, and a few remarkable allusions to historical events, such as the capture of Rome by Heraclian—the general tenour of them is hardly of sufficient importance to justify the labour of translation or the bulk and expense of the additional volumes. An exception might be made in favour of the Book on the Site and Names of Hebrew Places; but this is a work of Eusebius rather than Jerome (see pp. 485, 486 and Prolegomena to Eusebius, Vol. i. of this series); and it was necessary to confine the Translation of Jerome to a single volume, with the exception of the Book On Illustrious Men and the Apology against Rufinus, which will be found in Vol. iii. of this Series.

The Chronicle of Eusebius would, if translated at all, find its place in the works of Eusebius.

The Books on Church History and Controversy are given in full.

Of the Letters, which, excepting the Vulgate, form the most important legacy of Jerome to posterity, all those which have a personal or a historical interest have been translated. The only omissions are (1) the exegetical letters, to which what has been said of the Commentaries applies; (2) the letters to Augustin, which will be found in Vol. i. of the first series of this Library, annexed to the letters of Augustin to which they are replies; and (3) the encyclicals and letters of Theophilus, which have been summarised.

For a separate statement of the works which are given in this volume the reader will naturally consult the table of contents; and, for a more detailed account of the books themselves, the introductions prefixed to each.

V.—Estimate of the Scope and Value of Jerome’s Writings.

General. The writings of Jerome must be estimated not merely by their intrinsic merits, but by his historical position and influence. It has already been pointed out that he stands at the close of the old Græco-Roman civilisation: the last Roman poet of any repute, Claudian, and the last Roman historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, died before him. Augustin survived him, but the other great Fathers, both in the East and in the West, had passed away before him. The sack of Rome by Alaric (410) and its capture by Heraclian (413) took place in his lifetime, and the Empire of the West fell in the next thirty years. Communication between East and West had become rarer and mutual knowledge less. Eusebius knew no Latin, Ambrose no Greek; Rufinus, though a second-rate scholar, was welcomed in Italy on his return from the East in 397 as capable of imparting to the Latins the treasures of the Greek Church writers. The general enfeeblement of the human mind, which remains one of the problems of history, had set in. The new age of Christendom which was struggling to the birth was subject to the influence of Jerome more than to that of any of the Fathers.

Secular Learning. As regards general learning, indeed, it was impossible that any legacy should descend from him. He had systematically disparaged it (35-36, 498), though making use and even a parade of it (101, 114, 149, 178); and had defended himself by disingenuous pleas from the charge of acquiring it after his mature convictions were formed (Apol. i. 30, 31, Vol. iii. 498–499). His influence, therefore, would but increase the deep ignorance of literature which now settled upon mankind till the times of the Renaissance. His style indeed, is excellent, correct, and well balanced, full of animation and of happy phrases (see Index—Proverbs), and passing from one subject to another with great versatility. It is contrasted by Erasmus with the barbarisms of the Schoolmen, as that of the Christian Cicero. But it has also Cicero’s faults, especially his diffuseness. His Latinity is remarkably pure, and with the exception of the frequent use of the infinitive to express a purpose, and of a few words of late-Latin like confortare, we are hardly aware in reading him that we are 400 years away from the Augustan Age. His mastery of style is the more remarkable because he wrote nothing but a few letters and a very poor Commentary till about his thirty-fifth year.

Letters. His letters gain their special charm from being so personal. He himself, his correspondents, and the scenes in which they moved, are made to live before our eyes. See especially his descriptions of Roman life in the Epistles to Eustochium (Ep. xxii.), to Paula on the death of Blesilla (Ep. xxxix.), to Læta (Ep. cvii.) on the education of her child, and Ageruchia (Ep. cxxiii.); his account of the lives of Fabiola (Ep. lxxvii.), of Paula (Ep. cviii.), and of Marcella (Ep. cxxvii.); his description of the clerical life in his letter to Nepotian (Ep. lii.), and of the monastic life in his letters to Rusticus (Ep. cxxv.) and to Sabinian (Ep. cxlvii.); his letters of spiritual counsel to a mother and daughter (Ep. cxvii.), to Julianus (Ep. cxviii.), and to Rusticus (Ep. cxxii.), and of hermit life in his letter to Eustochium (Ep. xxii., pp. 24–25); his satirical description of Onasus (Ep. xl.), Rufinus (p. 250), and Vigilantius (p. 417); his enthusiastic delight in the Holy Land in the letter written by him to Paula and Eustochium inviting Marcella to join them (Ep. xlvi). Other characteristic and celebrated letters are those to Asella (xlv.) on his leaving Rome; to Pammachius (lvii.) on the best method of translation, which shows the liberties taken by translators in his time; to Oceanus (lxix.) in defence of a second marriage contracted by a Spanish Bishop, the first having been before baptism; to Magnus (lxx.), indicating his use of secular literature, and showing the great range of his knowledge; to Lucinius (lxxi.) on the copying of his works; to Avitus (cxxiv.) on the book of Origen, Περὶ ᾽Αρχῶν; to Demetrias (cxxx.) on the maintenance of virginity; to Ctesiphon (cxxxiii.) on the Pelagian controversy. (See also Index, words Stories and Pictures of Contemporary Life.)

Publication. Two circumstances conduced to the vividness and importance of this series of letters. One of these is the fact that no distinct line separated private documents from those designed for publication. In the Catalogue of his works (De Vir. Ill. 135)1 he says: “Of the Letters to Paula and Eustochium, the number is infinite: I write them every day.” And, when he became celebrated, he says (79) that whatever he wrote was at once laid hold of and published, alike by friends and enemies. We have therefore frequently his most confidential utterances; while on the other hand his letters frequently pass into treatises, and he turns to address others than those to whom he is writing (59, 273, 274). But the process of publication was precarious; so that between Letters xlvi. and xlvii. there is a gap of seven years (386–93) without any letter. The other circumstance is the difficulty of communication, which made letters rare and induced greater care in their composition. Both these circumstances are well illustrated by the early correspondence of Jerome with Augustin. Augustin wrote from Hippo in Africa a long and important letter to Jerome (Ep. lvi.) in the year 394, which did not reach Jerome at Bethlehem for nearly ten years. It was committed to a presbyter named Profuturus to carry to Jerome; but he, being elected to a bishopric before he started, turned back, and soon afterwards died. The letter was neither forwarded to Jerome nor returned to Augustin; but it was copied by others and became known in the West, while its somewhat severe criticisms were unknown to Jerome himself. After a time Augustin became aware by a short letter of introduction written by Jerome to a friend that his first letter had miscarried, and he wrote a second (Ep. lxvii.) much in the same strain; but Paulus, to whom it was entrusted, alleging his fear of the sea, failed to go to Bethlehem; and a copy of the letter was found a year or two afterwards by a friend of Jerome’s bound up with some of Augustin’s treatises in an island of the Adriatic. Jerome on hearing of this was naturally incensed; and it was not till the year 404 that he received an authentic copy of both letters direct from Augustin, and was able to return an answer. His answer, however, and a knowledge of his views are fuller than they might have been had personal communication been easier.

Knowledge. His knowledge was vast and many-sided [See especially the enumeration of Christian writers who used Pagan literature (149–151), the curious stories about marriage gathered from all ages (383–386), the descriptions of various kinds of food and medicines (392–394) and the account of Pythagoras and his doctrines (Apol. iii., 39, 40, in this Series, Vol. iii. 538)], but it was rather the curiosity of the monks of a later day than the temper of the philosopher or the historian. He was well acquainted with the history and literature of Rome and of Greece; he translated the Chronicle of Eusebius; he speaks of the various routes to India (245), of the Brahmans (97, 193, 397), of the custom of Suttee (381), and of Buddha (380). But he is quite uncritical; he makes no correction of the faults of the Chronicle, and his own additions to it reveal his credulity. He was deeply affected by the sack of Rome, and recurs to it again and again; but his reflections upon this and similar events hardly go beyond those of a mediæval chronicler. He is a recluse, and has no thought of the general interests of mankind.

Church History. This lack of criticism and of general interests combined with lack of time to prevent his making any considerable contribution to church history. That he had some faculties for this is shown by several passages in his Dialogue with a Luciferian (328–331) and his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers (On Illustrious Men, Vol. iii. 361–384). But his conception of church history is shown by his declaration (315) that he intended the Lives of Malchus and Hilarion as part of a series, which when completed would have formed an ecclesiastical history. Such a history would have been nothing more than a prolix edition of Rufinus’ History of the Monks. Jerome’s value to the church historian is quite of another kind; it lies in the illustration of contemporary life furnished by his own life and letters and by the controversies in which he was engaged.

Theology. These controversies bring us to consider Jerome’s position as a theologian. Here he is admittedly weak. He had no real interest in the subject. The first of his letters which deals with theology, that written from the Desert to Pope Damasus, points out clearly the difficulty raised by the difference of phraseology of East and West, the Eastern speaking of one Essence and three Substances, the Western, of one Substance and three Persons. But he makes no attempt to grasp the reality lying behind these expressions, and merely asks not to have the Eastern terms forced on his acceptance, while he professes in the most absolute terms his submission to the decision of the Bishop of Rome. This lack of genuine theological interest best explains his conduct in relation to Origen, his extravagant laudation of him at one time (46), his violent condemnation at another (187). He was carried away by Origen’s genius and industry in the department of biblical criticism and exegesis in which he was himself absorbed, and though in his earlier discussion of the Vision of Isaiah (22), which touched the doctrine of the Trinity, he had put aside Origen’s view that the Seraphim were the Son and the Spirit as wrongly expressing their relation to the Father, the doctrinal question was feebly present to his thoughts, and he repeated Origen’s exposition without blame as to the pre-existence of souls and the restoration of Satan (Ruf. Apol. ii. 13, Vol. iii. 467). When the subject of Origen’s orthodoxy was raised at a later time, he was unaware of any inconsistency when he fell in with the general condemnation of his doctrine. So with regard to Eusebius of Cæsarea. In the Preface to the translation of his Book on the Site and Names of Hebrew Places (485), he is “vir admirabilis”; in his controversy with Rufinus, Eusebius is nothing but a heretic. In his controversy with Augustin as to the quarrel between St. Peter and St. Paul in Gal. ii., which he interpreted as fictitious and pre-arranged with a view to bring out St. Paul’s solution of the question about the Gentile converts, he was manifestly in the wrong, and eventually seems to have felt this, yet as one who was silenced rather than convinced. At a later period he says to Augustin (Ep. cxxxiv.), “If the heretics see that we hold divergent opinions they will say calumniously that this is a result of hatred, whereas it is my firm resolution to love you, to look up to you, to defer to you with admiration, and to defend your opinions as my own.” His dread of heresy may be gathered from passage in the Anti-Pelagian Dialogue (i. 28) in which he expressly declares that, while sin can be forgiven, heresy, as being impiety, is subject to the threat: “They that forsake the Lord shall be consumed.” It is true that in his Catalogue he shows wider sympathies, and defends himself in writing to Augustin for the admission into it of men like Philo Judæus and Seneca. But this, though it might have led him to the larger views of the heathen world held by Origen and Clement, did not prevent his condemning to eternal torments even the most virtuous of the heathen. He tells Marcella, a Roman lady (41–42), that one object he has in writing to her is to instruct her that the consul-elect Vettius Agorius Prætextatus, who was known as a model of public and domestic virtue, and who had then recently died, is in Tartarus, while their friend Lea, who had died the same day, is in heaven.

The lack of deep theological conviction is shown in his Dialogue against the Pelagians, where it is evident that he is far from that original and deep view of human corruption which Augustin maintained; indeed, he appears at times to be arguing against his own side, when he says (471) that, “Till the end we are subject to sin; not,” (as the opponent falsely imputes to him) “through the fault of our nature and constitution, but through frailty and the mutability of the human will, which varies from moment to moment”—a sentence which might be taken as expressing the doctrine of Pelagius himself. It is evident that in these cases he is swayed not so much by the force of truth as by the authority of certain powerful Bishops and the wish to maintain his orthodox reputation. In his other controversies, with Helvidius, Jovinian, John, Bishop of Jerusalem, Vigilantius, and Rufinus, his method is take for granted the opinion current among the Christians of his day, and to support it by copious (sometimes excessive) quotations from Scripture, and by arguments sometimes well chosen and acutely maintained, as in the book against Helvidius (339), sometimes of the most frivolous character, as in that against Vigilantius (422). In the three last of these controversies the opposition is embittered by personal feeling, and Jerome hardly places any restraint on the contempt and hatred which it engenders.

In his criticisms on Scripture, however, he has a freer judgment, as when he says (337): Whether you think that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, or that Ezra re-edited it, in either case I make no objection;” or (349) that it was the Book of Deuteronomy which was found in the Temple in the reign of Josiah; or contrasts “the flickering flame of the Apostles” with the brightness of the lamp of Christ” (468). There are three points especially on which Jerome reached an independent conviction, and maintained it courageously. (1) He made a clear distinction between the Old Testament Canon and the Apocrypha (194, 491, 492, 493) and this although he records the fact that the Nicene Council had placed the Book of Judith in the Canon (494). For this he is justly commemorated in the Articles of the Church of England (Art. 6). (2) He maintains the essential identity of Bishops and Presbyters (288) and the development of the Episcopal out of the Presbyteral office (288, 289), in the face of the rapid tendency to the extreme exaltation of the Episcopate (92). (3) In the great work of his life, the composition of the Vulgate, he showed a clear and matured conviction, and a noble tenacity, unshaken either by popular clamour (490) or authority like that Augustin (189).

A few words may here be said on the asceticism which Jerome so eagerly promoted. If we ask how it was that he embraced it so fervently as to read it into almost every line of the Scriptures, we can only answer that it was part of the spirit of the time. Jerome had not the elevation of mind which might have enabled him to exercise a judgment upon the current which was bearing him away, or the higher critical power which would distinguish between what was in the Scriptures and what he brought to them. His habit of mind was to accept his general principles from some kind of church authority, which was partly that of the Bishops, partly the general drift of the sentiment of the Christians of his day; and having accepted them, to advocate them vehemently and without discrimination. Jerome could indeed exercise a certain moderation, even in matters of asceticism (246, 267). But his general attitude is that which disdained the common joys of life, which thought of eating, drinking, clothing or lodging, and most of all marriage, as physical indulgences which should suppressed as far as possible, rather than as the means of a noble social intercourse; and dread of impurity haunts him to such an extent as to entirely vitiate his view of society, and to cause him to disparage, and all but forbid, the married relation (29, 384, etc.). His view of monasticism in its inner principles is seen in his treatises against Helvidius, Jovinian, and Vigilantius. The reader may be specially referred to a passage in the last-named treatise, p. 423. If we ask the further question, how the tendency arose which so completely swayed him, we can only attribute it to the state of Roman society in the fourth and fifth centuries, which laid earnest men open to influences already working in other parts of the world. Jerome knew of the Brahmans and the Gymnosophists of India (97, 193, 397), and he several times mentions Buddha (380) as an example of asceticism. But students of Buddhism have failed to trace any direct filiation between the asceticism of the East and the West.

See a remarkable article on “The New Testament and Buddhism,” by Professor Estlin Carpenter, in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1879.

But it seems better to look to the social and political state of the world as the predisposing cause of monasticism. Even in the East it is thought that the miserable conditions of practical life have been the main cause of a religion of despair; and the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries offered similar causes in abundance. The grace which is completely absent from the great Christian writers of that epoch is hope. Such hope as is found even in the Civitas Dei of Augustin is entirely that of the world to come. The world before them seemed hopelessly corrupt. The descriptions of private morals given by Jerome are borne out by Ammianus Marcellinus; the failure of public spirit and military valour was equally conspicuous; and Gratian and Stilicho appear on the scene only to be murdered. When the crash of Alaric’s sack of Rome shook the existing world, no one realised that a new Christian world was coming, and the flight which Jerome witnessed of thousands of citizens from the sinking city to the mountains of Palestine was but one symptom of the despair which made them, to use Jerome's words, “quit the most frequented cities that in the fields and solitude they might mourn for sin and draw down on themselves the compassion of Christ” (446).

As an illustrator of Scripture, Jerome did much, and in some respects excellent work. The Book of Hebrew Names was no doubt of much use in the ages in which men were ignorant of Hebrew, although it has the clumsy arrangement of a separate glossary for each book of the Bible; it is very faulty and uncritical; there is no explanation, for instance, of Lehi in Judges, or of Engedi or Ichabod in 1 Samuel, or of Bethabara or Bethany in John, and the meanings given to words are extremely uncritical and sometimes absurd. Cherubim is said to mean a multitude of knowledge; Jezebel, “flowing with blood, a litter, a dung heap”; and Laodicæa, “the tribe beloved of the Lord, or, they have been in vomiting.” It is worthless now except as showing the state of knowledge of the fourth century A.D., and that of the author of the Vulgate.

The Book of the Site and Names of Hebrew Places belongs rather to Eusebius than to Jerome, being translated from Eusebius, though with some additions. An account of it is given in the Prolegomena to Eusebius. The arrangement of this book is, like the former, very inconvenient, the names under each letter being placed in separate groups in the order of the books of Scripture in which they occur: for instance, under the letter A we have first the names in Genesis, then those in Exodus, and so on. But there is less room here for what is fanciful, and the testimony of men who lived in Palestine in the fourth and fifth centuries is of great value still to the student of sacred topography. When the places are outside the writer’s knowledge, credulity is apt to creep in, as when the author tells us that in Ararat portions of the ark are still to be found.

The Book of Hebrew Questions on Genesis is simply a set of notes on passages where the reference to the Hebrew text gives a different reading from that of the LXX., which was received as authoritative up to Jerome’s day. For instance, in Gen. xlvi. 26, the LXX. says that Joseph’s descendants born in Egypt were nine, the Hebrew, two. Jerome accounts for the discrepancy by the supposition that the LXX. added in the sons of Ephraim and Manasseh, who were subsequently born in Egypt, and who in the LXX. are enumerated just before. Jerome states in the preface his intention to compose a similar set of notes to each book of the Old Testament, but he was never able to go beyond Genesis. What he gives us is of considerable interest and value, so that it is a matter of regret that he could not go further.

As a commentator, Jerome’s fault is a lack of independence; his merit lies in giving fully the opinions of others which we might otherwise not have known. This he considers, as seen in his controversy with Rufinus, the principal task of a commentator (Apol. i. 16, Vol. iii. 491). In the passages there at issue, he states the most incongruous interpretations without criticising them, and Rufinus can hardly be blamed for suggesting that he is sometimes expressing his own opinion under that of “another.” In matters of ordinary interpretation his judgment is good. But fanciful ideas are apt to intrude, as when, in the Commentary on Ecclesiastes, the city delivered by the poor wise man is made to mean the individual delivered from Satan by the better man within him, or the Church delivered from the hosts of darkness by Christ. When an occasion for the introduction of asceticism occurs, Jerome never hesitates at any process, however absurd, which will draw the passage to a sanction of his peculiar views (Against Jovin. i. 30, p. 368). We should have been glad, had space permitted, to have given a specimen of his better style of exposition, but it was found necessary to suppress this.

It is as a translator of Scripture that Jerome is best known. His Vulgate was made at the right moment and by the right man. The Latin language was still living, although Latin civilisation was dying; and Jerome was a master of it. It is only to be regretted that he did not give fuller scope to his literary power in his translation of Scripture. In his letter to Pammachius on the best method of translation (114), he advocates great freedom of treatment, even such as amounts to paraphrase, and even to the insertion of sentences congruous to the sense of the author. He takes the fact that the quotations in the New Testament from the Old often present discrepancies in words and sense as justifying similar discrepancies in a translation. He does not, however, appear in dealing with ordinary books to have used this license in any extreme way; and his translations, without departing from correctness, read as good literary composition. But from the operation of his rules of translation he expressly excepts the Scriptures. “In other books,” he says (113), “my effort is not to express word by word, but meaning by meaning; but in the Holy Scriptures even the order of the words has a secret meaning” (et ordo verborum mysterium est). He even says (80): “A version made for the use of the Church, even though it may possess a literary charm, ought to disguise and avoid it as far as possible.” This belief in a secret meaning in the words and their order as apart from the sense goes far to injure the Vulgate translation. His principles, indeed, are excellent, namely, (1) never to swerve needlessly from the original; (2) to avoid solecisms; (3) even by the admission of solecisms, to give the true sense. But it is evident that they must be vitiated by the supposition of a hidden sense in the arrangement of the words; and the result is a style which frequently deprives a passage of its proper elegance, and the pleasure which it should give to the reader, and a too frequent introduction of solecisms and abandonment of the attempt to make sense of a passage. It also gives an air of saintly unreality to many parts of the Scriptures and thus to produce confusion. The merits of the translation are also very various, as was the time which Jerome bestowed on the different parts. The Books of Solomon, for instance, he translated very rapidly (492), the Book of Tobit in a single day (494). For some parts he trusted to his own knowledge, for others he obtained aid at great cost of money and trouble (Preface to Job and to Tobit, 491, 494). But, while we thus go behind the scenes, we must not fail to look at the completed work as a whole. It was wrought out with noble perseverance and unflinching purpose amidst many discouragements. It was highly prized even in Jerome’s lifetime, so that he is able to record that a large part of the Old Testament was translated into Greek from his version by his friend Sophronius, and was read in the Eastern Churches (492). After his death it won its way to become the Vulgate or common version of Western Christendom; it was the Bible of the Middle Ages; and in the year 1546 (eleven centuries after its author’s death) was pronounced by the Council of Trent to be the only true version, and alone authorised to be printed.

A few personal details must be given to illustrate his method of composition and his surroundings. Nothing is known of his personal appearance. His health was weak, and he had several long illnesses, especially in the years 398, 404, and in the last year of his life. His eyes began to fail during his stay at Constantinople in 380–382, and he usually employed an amanuensis; but he still wrote at times, and what he wrote was more polished than what he dictated. “In the one case I constantly turn the stylus; in the other, whatever words come into my mouth I heap together in my rapid utterance” (Ep. lxxiv. 6). He composed with great rapidity, and dictated at times as much as one thousand lines in a day (Comm. on Ephes., Book ii. Preface). He often, especially when in weak health, lay on a couch (Ep. lxxiv. 6), taking down one volume after another to aid in the composition of his Commentaries. And he often sat late into the night [his book against Vigilantius was “the lucubration of a single night” (423)], the days being occupied in business of various kinds, as stated above—the monasteries, the entertainment of strangers, the teaching of boys, the exposition of Scripture to his brethren in the monastery, and, according to Sulpicius Severus, the charge of the parish of Bethlehem. As has been mentioned above, he was interrupted again and again by illness, and on several occasions was in alarm from the threatened invasions of the Huns and Isaurians, and at the end of his life from the violent adherents of Pelagius. He also suffered from poverty, and his friends one by one were taken from him. But he persevered against all obstacles; and his latest works, the Anti-Pelagian Dialogue and the Commentary on Jeremiah, show little if any diminution of power.

VI.—Character and Influence of Jerome.

This Introduction must be concluded with a few words on the character and influence of Jerome, which are taken from the article upon him in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. He was vain and unable to bear rivals, extremely sensitive as to the estimation in which he was held by his contemporaries, and especially by the Bishops; passionate and resentful, but at times becoming suddenly placable; scornful and violent in controversy; kind to the weak and the poor; respectful in his dealings with women; entirely without avarice; extraordinarily diligent in work, and nobly tenacious of the main objects to which he devoted his life. There was, however, something of monkish cowardice in his asceticism, and his influence was not felt by the strong.

His influence grew through his life and increased after his death. If we may use a scriptural phrase which has sometimes been applied to such influence, “He lived and reigned for a thousand years.” His writings contain the whole spirit of the Church of the Middle Ages, its monasticism, its contrast of sacred things with profane, its credulity and superstition, its value for relics, its subjection to hierarchical authority, its dread of heresy, its passion for pilgrimages. To the society which was thus in a great measure formed by him, his Bible was the greatest boon which could have been given. But he founded no school and had no inspiring power; there was no courage or width of view in his spiritual legacy such as could break through the fatal circle of bondage to received authority which was closing round mankind. As Thierry says in the last words of his work on St. Jerome, “There is no continuation of his work; a few more letters of Augustin and Paulinus, and night falls over the West.”

Chronological Tables of the Life and Times of St. Jerome A.D. 345–420.

Letter II. To Theodosius and the Rest of the Anchorites.

Written from Antioch, 374 a.d., while Jerome was still in doubt as to his future course. Theodosius appears to have been the head of the solitaries in the Syrian Desert.

How I long to be a member of your company, and with uplifting of all my powers to embrace your admirable community! Though, indeed, these poor eyes are not worthy to look upon it. Oh! that I could behold the desert, lovelier to me than any city! Oh! that I could see those lonely spots made into a paradise by the saints that throng them! But since my sins prevent me from thrusting into your blessed company a head laden with every transgression, I adjure you (and I know that you can do it) by your prayers to deliver me from the darkness of this world. I spoke of this when I was with you, and now in writing to you I repeat anew the same request; for all the energy of my mind is devoted to this one object. It rests with you to give effect to my resolve. I have the will but not the power; this last can only come in answer to your prayers. For my part, I am like a sick sheep astray from the flock. Unless the good Shepherd shall place me on his shoulders and carry me back to the fold,

Luke xv. 3–5.

The seas around, and all around the main.

Virg. A. v. 9.

I find myself in mid-ocean, unwilling to retreat and unable to advance. It only remains that your prayers should win for me the gale of the Holy Spirit to waft me to the haven upon the desired shore.

Letter III. To Rufinus the Monk.

In Jerome’s day this term included all—whether hermits or cœnobites—who forsook the world and embraced an ascetic life.

Written from Antioch, 374 a.d., to Rufinus in Egypt. Jerome narrates his travels and the events which have taken place since his arrival in Syria, particularly the deaths of Innocent and Hylas (§3). He also describes the life of Bonosus, who was now a hermit on an island in the Adriatic (§4). The main object of the letter is to induce Rufinus to come to Syria.

1. That God gives more than we ask Him for,

Cf. Eph. iii. 20.

2. My first joy at such unexpected good tidings was due to our brother, Heliodorus. I desired to be sure of it, but did not dare to feel sure, especially as he told me that he had only heard it from some one else, and as the strangeness of the news impaired the credit of the story. Once more my wishes hovered in uncertainty and my mind wavered, till an Alexandrian monk who had some time previously been sent over by the dutiful zeal of the people to the Egyptian confessors (in will already martyrs

Priests, monks, and others who, because they would not declare themselves Arians, were banished by order of Valens to Heliopolis in Phenicia.

Letter IV. To Florentius.

Sent to Florentius along with the preceding letter, which Jerome requests him to deliver to Rufinus. This Florentius was a rich Italian who had retired to Jerusalem to pursue the monastic life. Jerome subsequently speaks of him as “a distinguished monk so pitiful to the needy that he was generally known as the father of the poor.” (Chron. ad a.d. 381.)

1. How much your name and sanctity are on the lips of the most different peoples you may gather from the fact that I commence to love you before I know you. For as, according to the apostle, “Some men’s sins are evident going before unto judgment,”

1 Tim. v. 24, R.V.

2. Our brother, Rufinus, is said to have come from Egypt to Jerusalem with the devout lady, Melanium. He is inseparably bound to me in brotherly love; and I beg you to oblige me by delivering to him the annexed letter. You must not, however, judge of me by the virtues that you find in him. For in him you will see the clearest tokens of holiness, whilst I am but dust and vile dirt, and even now, while still living, nothing but ashes. It is enough for me if my weak eyes can bear the brightness of his excellence. He has but now washed himself

Rufinus had been baptized at Aquileia about three years previously (371 a.d.).

The reverend presbyter, Evagrius, warmly salutes you. We both with united respect salute the brother, Martinianus.

Acc. to Vallarsi a hermit, who at this time lived near Cæsarea.

Letter V. To Florentius.

Written a few months after the preceding (about the end of 374 a.d.) from the Syrian Desert. After dilating on his friendship for Florentius, and making a passing allusion to Rufinus, Jerome mentions certain books, copies of which he desires to be sent to him. He also speaks of a runaway slave about whom Florentius had written to him.

1. Your letter, dear friend, finds me dwelling in that quarter of the desert which is nearest to Syria and the Saracens. And the reading of it rekindles in my mind so keen a desire to set out for Jerusalem that I am almost ready to violate my monastic vow in order to gratify my affection. Wishing to do the best I can, as I cannot come in person I send you a letter instead; and thus, though absent in the body, I come to you in love and in spirit.

Cf. Col. ii. 5.

2. You write that our brother, Rufinus, has not yet come to you. Even if he does come it will do little to satisfy my longing, for I shall not now be able to see him. He is too far away to come hither, and the conditions of the lonely life that I have adopted forbid me to go to him. For I am no longer free to follow my own wishes. I entreat you, therefore, to ask him to allow you to have the commentaries of the reverend Rhetitius,

A man of some note, as he was one of the commissioners appointed by Constantine in 313 a.d. to settle the points of issue between the Catholics and the Donatists. Jerome criticises his commentary on the Song of Songs in Letter XXXVII.

Others you welcome beneath your roof, you cherish and comfort, you help out of your own purse; but so far as I am concerned, you have given me everything when once you have granted my request. And since, through the Lord’s bounty, I am rich in volumes of the sacred library,

I.e. the Scriptures.

3. As regards the present master of your slave—of whom you have done me the honor to write—I have no doubt but that he is his kidnapper. While I was still at Antioch the presbyter, Evagrius, often reproved him in my presence. To whom he made this answer: “I have nothing to fear.” He declares that his master has dismissed him. If you both want him, he is here; send him whither you will. I think I am not wrong in refusing to allow a runaway to stray farther. Here in the wilderness I cannot myself execute your orders; and therefore I have asked my dear friend Evagrius to push the affair vigorously, both for your sake and for mine. I desire your welfare in Christ.

Letter VI. To Julian, a Deacon of Antioch.

This letter, written in 374 a.d., is chiefly interesting for its mention of Jerome’s sister. It would seem that she had fallen into sin and had been restored to a life of virtue by the deacon, Julian. Jerome speaks of her again in the next letter (§4).

It is an old saying, “Liars are disbelieved even when they speak the truth.”

Aristotle is the author of this remark.

All singers have one fault among their friends:

They never sing when asked, unasked they never cease.

Henceforth I shall overwhelm you with such bundles of letters that you will take the opposite line and beg me not to write.

I rejoice that my sister

Mentioned again in Letter VII., § 4.

Shatter the world to fragments if you will:

’Twill fall upon a head which knows not fear.

Horace, C. iii. 3, 7, 8.

Bear in mind, then, I pray you, the apostle’s precept

1 Cor. iii. 14.

Letter VII. To Chromatius, Jovinus, and Eusebius.

Jovinus was archdeacon of Aquileia. All three became bishops—Chromatius of Aquileia, the others of unknown sees.

This letter (written like the preceding in 374 a.d.) is addressed by Jerome to three of his former companions in the religious life. It commends Bonosus (§3), asks guidance for the writer’s sister (§4), and attacks the conduct of Lupicinus, Bishop of Stridon (§5).

1. Those whom mutual affection has joined together, a written page ought not to sunder. I must not, therefore, distribute my words some to one and some to another. For so strong is the love that binds you together that affection unites all three of you in a bond no less close than that which naturally connects two of your number.

Chromatius and Eusebius were brothers.

Letter VIII. To Niceas, Sub-Deacon of Aquileia.

Niceas, the sub-deacon, had accompanied Jerome to the East but had now returned home. In after-years he became bishop of Aquileia in succession to Chromatius. The date of the letter is 374 a.d.

The comic poet Turpilius

Turpilius, who appears to have been a dramatist of some note, died in 101 b.c. He is mentioned by Jerome in his edition of the Eusebian Chronicle.

Letter IX. To Chrysogonus, a Monk of Aquileia.

A bantering letter to an indifferent correspondent. Of the same date as the preceding.

Heliodorus,

See introd. to Letter XIV.

Letter X. To Paul, an Old Man of Concordia.

Jerome writes to Paul of Concordia, a centenarian (§2), and the owner of a good theological library (§3), to lend him some commentaries. In return he sends him his life (newly written) of Paul the hermit.

See the Life of Paul in this volume.

1. The shortness of man’s life is the punishment for man’s sin; and the fact that even on the very threshold of the light death constantly overtakes the new-born child proves that the times are continually sinking into deeper depravity. For when the first tiller of paradise had been entangled by the serpent in his snaky coils, and had been forced in consequence to migrate earthwards, although his deathless state was changed for a mortal one, yet the sentence

Elogium.

2. Why, say you, these opening reflections so remote and so far fetched that one might use against them the Horatian witticism:

Back to the eggs which Leda laid for Zeus,

The bard is fain to trace the war of Troy?

Hor. A. P. 147. Zeus having visited Leda in the form of a swan, she produced two eggs, from one of which came Castor and Pollux, and from the other Helen, who was the cause of the Trojan war.

Simply that I may describe in fitting terms your great age and hoary head as white as Christ’s.

Rev. i. 14.

Letter XI. To the Virgins of Æmona.

Æmona was a Roman colony not far from Stridon, Jerome’s birthplace. The virgins to whom the note is addressed had omitted to answer his letters, and he now writes to upbraid them for their remissness. The date of the letter is 374 a.d.

This scanty sheet of paper shows in what a wilderness I live, and because of it I have to say much in few words. For, desirous though I am to speak to you more fully, this miserable scrap compels me to leave much unsaid. Still ingenuity makes up for lack of means, and by writing small I can say a great deal. Observe, I beseech you, how I love you, even in the midst of my difficulties, since even the want of materials does not stop me from writing to you.

Pardon, I beseech you, an aggrieved man: if I speak in tears and in anger it is because I have been injured. For in return for my regular letters you have not sent me a single syllable. Light, I know, has no communion with darkness,

2 Cor. vi. 14.

Dear sisters, man’s envy judges in one way, Christ in another; and the whisper of a corner is not the same as the sentence of His tribunal. Many ways seem right to men which are afterwards found to be wrong.

Cf. Prov. xiv. 12.

Letter XII. To Antony, Monk.

The subject of this letter is similar to that of the preceding. Of Antony nothing is known except that some mss. describe him as “of Æmona.” The date of the letter is 374 a.d.

While the disciples were disputing concerning precedence our Lord, the teacher of humility, took a little child and said: “Except ye be converted and become as little children ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Matt. xviii. 3.

Now, unless I am mistaken, I have already sent you ten letters, affectionate and earnest, whilst you have not deigned to give me even a single line. The Lord speaks to His servants, but you, my brother servant, refuse to speak to me. Believe me, if reserve did not check my pen, I could show my annoyance in such invective that you would have to reply—even though it might be in anger. But since anger is human, and a Christian must not act injuriously, I fall back once more on entreaty, and beg you to love one who loves you, and to write to him as a servant should to his fellow-servant. Farewell in the Lord.

Letter XIII. To Castorina, His Maternal Aunt.

An interesting letter, as throwing some light on Jerome’s family relations. Castorina, his maternal aunt, had, for some reason, become estranged from him, and he now writes to her to effect a reconciliation. Whether he succeeded in doing so, we do not know. The date of the letter is 374 a.d.

The apostle and evangelist John rightly says, in his first epistle, that “whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.”

1 Joh. iii. 15.

Letter XIV. To Heliodorus, Monk.

Heliodorus, originally a soldier, but now a presbyter of the Church, had accompanied Jerome to the East, but, not feeling called to the solitary life of the desert, had returned to Aquileia. Here he resumed his clerical duties, and in course of time was raised to the episcopate as bishop of Altinum.

The letter was written in the first bitterness of separation and reproaches Heliodorus for having gone back from the perfect way of the ascetic life. The description given of this is highly colored and seems to have produced a great impression in the West. Fabiola was so much enchanted by it that she learned the letter by heart.

See Ep. lxxvii. 9.

1. So conscious are you of the affection which exists between us that you cannot but recognize the love and passion with which I strove to prolong our common sojourn in the desert. This very letter—blotted, as you see, with tears—gives evidence of the lamentation and weeping with which I accompanied your departure. With the pretty ways of a child you then softened your refusal by soothing words, and I, being off my guard, knew not what to do. Was I to hold my peace? I could not conceal my eagerness by a show of indifference. Or was I to entreat you yet more earnestly? You would have refused to listen, for your love was not like mine. Despised affection has taken the one course open to it. Unable to keep you when present, it goes in search of you when absent. You asked me yourself, when you were going away, to invite you to the desert when I took up my quarters there, and I for my part promised to do so. Accordingly I invite you now; come, and come quickly. Do not call to mind old ties; the desert is for those who have left all. Nor let the hardships of our former travels deter you. You believe in Christ, believe also in His words: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.”

Matt. vi. 33.

2. But what is this, and why do I foolishly importune you again? Away with entreaties, an end to coaxing words. Offended love does well to be angry. You have spurned my petition; perhaps you will listen to my remonstrance. What keeps you, effeminate soldier, in your father’s house? Where are your ramparts and trenches? When have you spent a winter in the field? Lo, the trumpet sounds from heaven! Lo, the Leader comes with clouds!

Rev. i. 7.

3. Hereafter there shall come—yes, there shall come—a day when you will return a victor to your true country, and will walk through the heavenly Jerusalem crowned with the crown of valor. Then will you receive the citizenship thereof with Paul.

Phi. iii. 20, R.V.

I am not ignorant of the fetters which you may plead as hindrances. My breast is not of iron nor my heart of stone. I was not born of flint or suckled by a tigress.

Virg. A. iv. 367.

The sole support and pillar of your house.

Virg. A. xii. 59.

The love of God and the fear of hell will easily break such bonds.

Scripture, you will argue, bids us obey our parents.

Eph. vi. 1.

Letter XV. To Pope Damasus.

This letter, written in 376 or 377 a.d., illustrates Jerome’s attitude towards the see of Rome at this time held by Damasus, afterwards his warm friend and admirer. Referring to Rome as the scene of his own baptism and as a church where the true faith has remained unimpaired (§1), and laying down the strict doctrine of salvation only within the pale of the church (§2), Jerome asks “the successor of the fisherman” two questions, viz.: (1) who is the true bishop of the three claimants of the see of Antioch, and (2) which is the correct terminology, to speak of three “hypostases” in the Godhead, or of one? On the latter question he expresses fully his own opinion.

1. Since the East, shattered as it is by the long-standing feuds, subsisting between its peoples, is bit by bit tearing into shreds the seamless vest of the Lord, “woven from the top throughout,”

Joh. xix. 23.

2. Yet, though your greatness terrifies me, your kindness attracts me. From the priest I demand the safe-keeping of the victim, from the shepherd the protection due to the sheep. Away with all that is overweening; let the state of Roman majesty withdraw. My words are spoken to the successor of the fisherman, to the disciple of the cross. As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built!

Matt. xvi. 18.

Letter XVI. To Pope Damasus.

This letter, written a few months after the preceding, is another appeal to Damasus to solve the writer’s doubts. Jerome once more refers to his baptism at Rome, and declares that his one answer to the factions at Antioch is, “He who clings to the chair of Peter is accepted by me.” Written from the desert in the year 377 or 378.

1. By her importunity the widow in the gospel at last gained a hearing,

Matt. xv. 28.

2. As I have already written to you,

See Letter XV.

They change not mind but sky who cross the sea.

Hor. Epist. i. 11, 27.

The untiring foe follows me closely, and the assaults that I suffer in the desert are severer than ever. For the Arian frenzy raves, and the powers of the world support it. The church is rent into three factions, and each of these is eager to seize me for its own. The influence of the monks is of long standing, and it is directed against me. I meantime keep crying: “He who clings to the chair of Peter is accepted by me.” Meletius, Vitalis, and Paulinus

The three rival claimants of the see of Antioch. Paulinus and Meletius were both orthodox, but Meletius derived his orders from the Arians and was consequently not recognized in the West. In the East, however, he was so highly esteemed that some years after this he was chosen to preside over the Council of Constantinople (a.d. 391). Vitalis, the remaining claimant, was a follower of Apollinaris, but much respected by the orthodox on account of his high character.

Letter XVII. To the Presbyter Marcus.

In this letter, addressed to one who seems to have had some pre-eminence among the monks of the Chalcidian desert, Jerome complains of the hard treatment meted out to him because of his refusal to take any part in the great theological dispute then raging in Syria. He protests his own orthodoxy, and begs permission to remain where he is until the return of spring, when he will retire from “the inhospitable desert.” Written in a.d. 378 or 379.

1. I had made up my mind to use the words of the psalmist: “While the wicked was before me I was dumb with silence; I was humbled, and I held my peace even from good”

Ps. xxxix. 1, 2, Vulg.

2. And first, before I speak to you of my belief (which you know full well), I am forced to cry out against the inhumanity of this country. A hackneyed quotation best expresses my meaning:

What savages are these who will not grant

A rest to strangers, even on their sands!

They threaten war and drive us from their coasts.

Virg. A. i. 539–541.

I take this from a Gentile poet that one who disregards the peace of Christ may at least learn its meaning from a heathen. I am called a heretic, although I preach the consubstantial trinity. I am accused of the Sabellian impiety although I proclaim with unwearied voice that in the Godhead there are three distinct,

Subsistenets.

3. Reverend and holy father, Jesus is my witness with what groans and tears I have written all this. “I have kept silence, saith the Lord, but shall I always keep silence? Surely not.”

Isa. xlii. 14, LXX.

4. As regards the questions which you have thought fit to put to me concerning the faith, I have given to the reverend Cyril

Who this was is unknown. The extant document purporting to contain this confession is not genuine.

Letter XVIII. To Pope Damasus.

This (written from Constantinople in a.d. 381) is the earliest of Jerome’s expository letters. In it he explains at length the vision recorded in the sixth chapter of Isaiah, and enlarges upon its mystical meaning. “Some of my predecessors,” he writes, “make ‘the Lord sitting upon a throne’ God the Father, and suppose the seraphim to represent the Son and the Holy Spirit. I do not agree with them, for John expressly tells us

John xii. 41.

The letter is noticeable for the evidence it affords of the thoroughness of Jerome’s studies. Not only does he cite the several Greek versions of Isaiah in support of his argument, but he also reverts to the Hebrew original. So far as the West was concerned he may be said to have discovered this anew. Even educated men like Augustine had ceased to look beyond the LXX., and were more or less aghast at the boldness with which Jerome rejected its time-honored but inaccurate renderings.

See Augustine’s letters to Jerome, passim.

The letter also shows that independence of judgment which always marked Jerome’s work. At the time when he wrote it he was much under the sway of Origen. But great as was his admiration for the master, he was not afraid to discard his exegesis when, as in the case of the seraphim, he believed it to be erroneous.

Letter XIX. From Pope Damasus.

A letter from Damasus to Jerome, in which he asks for an explanation of the word “Hosanna” (a.d. 383).

Letter XX. To Pope Damasus.

Jerome’s reply to the foregoing. Exposing the error of Hilary of Poitiers, who supposed the expression to signify “redemption of the house of David,” he goes on to show that in the gospels it is a quotation from Psa. cxviii. 25 and that its true meaning is “save now” (so A.V.). “Let us,” he writes, “leave the streamlets of conjecture and return to the fountain-head. It is from the Hebrew writings that the truth is to be drawn.” Written at Rome a.d. 383.

Letter XXI. To Damasus

In this letter Jerome, at the request of Damasus, gives a minutely detailed explanation of the parable of the prodigal son.

Letter XXII. To Eustochium.

Perhaps the most famous of all the letters. In it Jerome lays down at great length (1) the motives which ought to actuate those who devote themselves to a life of virginity, and (2) the rules by which they ought to regulate their daily conduct. The letter contains a vivid picture of Roman society as it then was—the luxury, profligacy, and hypocrisy prevalent among both men and women, besides some graphic autobiographical details (§§7, 30), and concludes with a full account of the three kinds of monasticism then practised in Egypt (§§34–36). Thirty years later Jerome wrote a similar letter to Demetrias (CXXX.), with which this ought to be compared. Written at Rome 384 a.d.

1. “Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people and thy father’s house, and the king shall desire thy beauty.”

Ps. xlv. 10, 11.

Letter XXIII. To Marcella.

Jerome writes to Marcella to console her for the loss of a friend who, like herself, was the head of a religious society at Rome. The news of Lea’s death had first reached Marcella when she was engaged with Jerome in the study of the 73d psalm. Later in the day he writes this letter in which, after extolling Lea, he contrasts her end with that of the consul-elect, Vettius Agorius Prætextatus, a man of great ability and integrity, whom he declares to be now “in Tartarus.” Written at Rome in 384 a.d.

1. To-day, about the third hour, just as I was beginning to read with you the seventy-second psalm

In the English Version Ps. lxxiii.

2. You may ask what is the use of repeating all this. I will reply in the apostle’s words, “much every way.”

Rom. iii. 2.

Letter XXIV. To Marcella.

Concerning the virgin Asella. Dedicated to God before her birth, Marcella’s sister had been made a church-virgin at the age of ten. From that time she had lived a life of the severest asceticism, first as a member and then as the head of Marcella’s community upon the Aventine. Jerome, who subsequently wrote her a letter (XLV) on his departure from Rome, now holds her up as a model to be admired and imitated. Written at Rome a.d. 384.

1. Let no one blame my letters for the eulogies and censures which are contained in them. To arraign sinners is to admonish those in like case, and to praise the virtuous is to quicken the zeal of those who wish to do right. The day before yesterday I spoke to you concerning Lea of blessed memory,

Vide the preceding Letter.

2. I pass over the facts that, before her birth, she was blessed while still in her mother’s womb, and that, virgin-like, she was delivered to her father in a dream in a bowl of shining glass brighter than a mirror. And I say nothing of her consecration to the blessed life of virginity, a ceremony which took place when she was hardly more than ten years old, a mere babe still wrapped in swaddling clothes. For all that comes before works should be counted of grace;

Rom. xi. 6.

Letter XXV. To Marcella.

An explanation of the ten names given to God in the Hebrew Scriptures. The ten names are El, Elohim, Sabaôth, Eliôn, Asher yeheyeh (Ex. iii. 14), Adonai, Jah, the tetragram JHVH, and Shaddai. Written at Rome 384 a.d.

Letter XXVI. To Marcella.

An explanation of certain Hebrew words which have been left untranslated in the versions. The words are Alleluia, Amen, Maran atha. Written at Rome 384 a.d.

Letter XXVII. To Marcella.

In this letter Jerome defends himself against the charge of having altered the text of Scripture, and shows that he has merely brought the Latin Version of the N.T. into agreement with the Greek original. Written at Rome 384 a.d.

1. After I had written my former letter,

XXVI.

Letter XXVIII. To Marcella.

An explanation of the Hebrew word Selah. This word, rendered by the LXX. διάψαλμα and by Aquila ἀεί, was as much a crux in Jerome’s day as it is in ours. “Some,” he writes, “make it a ‘change of metre,’ others ‘a pause for breath,’ others ‘the beginning of a new subject.’ According to yet others it has something to do with rhythm or marks a burst of instrumental music.” Jerome himself inclines to follow Aquila and Origen, who make the word mean “forever,” and suggests that it betokens completion, like the “explicit” or “feliciter” in contemporary Latin mss. Written at Rome a.d. 384.

Letter XXIX. To Marcella.

An explanation of the Hebrew words Ephod bad (1 Sam. ii. 18) and Teraphim (Judges xvii. 5). Written at Rome to Marcella, also at Rome a.d. 384.

Letter XXX. To Paula.

Some account of the so-called alphabetical psalms (XXXVII., CXI., CXII., CXIX., CXLV.). After explaining the mystical meaning of the alphabet, Jerome goes on thus: “What honey is sweeter than to know the wisdom of God? others, if they will, may possess riches, drink from a jewelled cup, shine in silks, and try in vain to exhaust their wealth in the most varied pleasures. Our riches are to meditate in the law of the Lord day and night,

Ps. i. 2.

Letter XXXI. To Eustochium.

Jerome writes to thank Eustochium for some presents sent to him by her on the festival of St. Peter. He also moralizes on the mystical meaning of the articles sent. The letter should be compared with Letter XLIV., of which the theme is similar. Written at Rome in 384 a.d. (on St. Peter’s Day).

1. Doves, bracelets, and a letter are outwardly but small gifts to receive from a virgin, but the action which has prompted them enhances their value. And since honey may not be offered in sacrifice to God,

Lev. ii. 11.

2. It is true that a festival such as the birthday

I.e. the day of his martyrdom, his heavenly nativity.

My words are too harsh, you will say, and hardly suitable to a festival like the present. If so, you have provoked me to it by the nature of your own gifts. So long as you put bitter with sweet, you must expect the same from me, sharp words that is, as well as praise.

3. However, I do not wish to make light of your gifts, least of all the basket of fine cherries, blushing with such a virgin modesty that I can fancy them freshly gathered by Lucullus

Celebrated for his campaigns against Mithridates, and also as a prince of epicures.

Letter XXXII. To Marcella.

Jerome writes that he is busy collating Aquila’s Greek version of the Old Testament with the Hebrew, inquires after Marcella’s mother, and forwards the two preceding letters (XXX., XXXI.). Written at Rome in 384 a.d.

1. There are two reasons for the shortness of this letter, one that its bearer is impatient to start, and the other that I am too busy to waste time on trifles. You ask what business can be so urgent as to stop me from a chat on paper. Let me tell you, then, that for some time past I have been comparing Aquila’s version

This version, made in the reign of Hadrian by a Jewish proselyte who is said by some to have been a renegade Christian, was marked by an exaggerated literalism and a close following of the Hebrew original. By the Church it was regarded with suspicion as being designedly anti-Christian. Jerome, however, here acquits Aquila of the charge brought against him.

2. I hope that Albina, your mother and mine, is well. In bodily health, I mean, for I doubt not of her spiritual welfare. Pray salute her for me, and cherish her with double affection, both as a Christian and as a mother.

Letter XXXIII. To Paula.

A fragment of a letter in which Jerome institutes a comparison between the industry as writers of M. T. Varro and Origen. It is noteworthy as passing an unqualified eulogium upon Origen, which contrasts strongly with the tone adopted by the writer in subsequent years (see, e.g., Letter LXXXIV.). Its date is probably 384 a.d.

1. Antiquity marvels at Marcus Terentius Varro,

Of the 490 books composed by this voluminous writer only two are extant, a treatise on husbandry and an essay on the Latin language.

2. Varro’s writings include forty-five books of antiquities, four concerning the life of the Roman people.

3. But why, you ask me, have I thus mentioned Varro and the man of brass? Simply to bring to your notice our Christian man of brass, or, rather, man of adamant

᾽Αδαμάντιος —Origen is so called by Eusebius (H. E. vi. 14, 10). It appears to have been his proper name.

* * * * * * * * * * *

4. So, you see, the labors of this one man have surpassed those of all previous writers, Greek and Latin. Who has ever managed to read all that he has written? Yet what reward have his exertions brought him? He stands condemned by his bishop, Demetrius,

Origen left Alexandria for good in 231 a.d., and it was in that or the following year that Demetrius convoked the synod which condemned not so much his writings as his conduct. He appears to have been excommunicated as a heretic.

5. I have written the above quickly and incautiously, by the light of a poor lantern. You will see why, if you think of those who to-day represent Epicurus and Aristippus.

Both these philosophers were hedonists, and the latter was a sensualist as well. Jerome is probably satirizing the worldly clergy of Rome, just as in after-years he nicknames his opponent Jovinian “the Christian Epicurus.”

Letter XXXIV. To Marcella.

In reply to a request from Marcella for information concerning two phrases in Ps. cxxvii. (“bread of sorrow,” v. 2, and “children of the shaken off,” A.V. “of the youth,” v. 4). Jerome, after lamenting that Origen’s notes on the psalm are no longer extant, gives the following explanations:

The Hebrew phrase “bread of sorrow” is rendered by the LXX. “bread of idols”; by Aquila, “bread of troubles”; by Symmachus, “bread of misery.” Theodotion follows the LXX. So does Origen’s Fifth Version. The Sixth renders “bread of error.” In support of the LXX. the word used here is in Ps. cxv. 4, translated “idols.” Either the troubles of life are meant or else the tenets of heresy.

With the second phrase he deals at greater length. After showing that Hilary of Poitiers’s view (viz. that the persons meant are the apostles, who were told to shake the dust off their feet, Matt. x. 14) is untenable and would require “shakers off” to be substituted for “shaken off,” Jerome reverts to the Hebrew as before and declares that the true rendering is that of Symmachus and Theodotion, viz. “children of youth.” He points out that the LXX. (by whom the Latin translators had been misled) fall into the same mistake at Neh. iv. 16. Finally he corrects a slip of Hilary as to Ps. cxxviii. 2, where, through a misunderstanding of the LXX., the latter had substituted “the labors of thy fruits” for “the labors of thy hands.” He speaks throughout with high respect of Hilary, and says that it was not the bishop’s fault that he was ignorant of Hebrew. The date of the letter is probably a.d. 384.

Letter XXXV. From Pope Damasus.

Damasus addresses five questions to Jerome with a request for information concerning them. They are:

1. What is the meaning of the words “Whosoever slayeth Cain vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold”? (Gen. iv. 5.)

2. If God has made all things good, how comes it that He gives charge to Noah concerning unclean animals, and says to Peter, “What God hath cleansed that call not thou common”? (Acts x. 15.)

3. How is Gen. xv. 16, “in the fourth generation they shall come hither again,” to be reconciled with Ex. xiii. 18, LXX, “in the fifth generation the children of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt”?

4. Why did Abraham receive circumcision as a seal of his faith? (Rom. iv. 11.)

5. Why was Isaac, a righteous man and dear to God, allowed by God to become the dupe of Jacob? (Gen. xxvii.) Written at Rome 384 a.d.

Letter XXXVI. To Pope Damasus.

Jerome’s reply to the foregoing. For the second and fourth questions he refers Damasus to the writings of Tertullian, Novatian, and Origen. The remaining three he deals with in detail.

Gen. iv. 15, he understands to mean “the slayer of Cain shall complete the sevenfold vengeance which is to be wreaked upon him.”

Exodus xiii. 18, he proposes to reconcile with Gen. xv. 16, by supposing that in the one place the tribe of Levi is referred to, in the other the tribe of Judah. He suggests, however, that the words rendered by the LXX. “in the fifth generation” more probably mean “harnessed” (so A.V.) or “laden.” In reply to the question about Isaac he says: “No man save Him who for our salvation has deigned to put on flesh has full knowledge and a complete grasp of the truth. Paul, Samuel, David, Elisha, all make mistakes, and holy men only know what God reveals to them.” He then goes on to give a mystical interpretation of the passage suggested by the martyr Hippolytus. Written the day after the previous letter.

Letter XXXVII. To Marcella.

Marcella had asked Jerome to lend her a copy of a commentary by Rhetitius, bishop of Augustodunum (Autun), on the Song of Songs. He now refuses to do so on the ground that the work abounds with errors, of which the two following are samples: (1) Rhetitius identifies Tharshish with Tarsus, and (2) he supposes that Uphaz (in the phrase “gold of Uphaz”) is the same as Cephas. Written at Rome a.d. 384.

Letter XXXVIII. To Marcella.

Blæsilla, the daughter of Paula and sister of Eustochium, had lost her husband seven months after her marriage. A dangerous illness had then led to her conversion, and she was now famous throughout Rome for the length to which she carried her austerities. Many censured her for what they deemed her fanaticism, and Jerome, as her spiritual adviser, came in for some of the blame. In the present letter he defends her conduct, and declares that persons who cavil at lives like hers have no claim to be considered Christians. Written at Rome in 385 a.d.

1. When Abraham is tempted to slay his son the trial only serves to strengthen his faith.

Gen. xxii.

2. So is it now, my dear Marcella, with our beloved Blæsilla. The burning fever from which we have seen her suffering unceasingly for nearly thirty days has been sent to teach her to renounce her over-great attention to that body which the worms must shortly devour. The Lord Jesus has come to her in her sickness, and has taken her by the hand, and behold, she arises and ministers unto Him.

Cf. Mark i. 30, 31.

3. A widow who is “loosed from the law of her husband”

Rom. vii. 2.

4. In days gone by our dear widow was extremely fastidious in her dress, and spent whole days before her mirror to correct its deficiencies. Now she boldly says: “We all with unveiled face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord.”

2 Cor. iii. 18, R.V.

5. But what, I ask you, have we ever done that men should be offended at us? Have we ever imitated the apostles? We are told of the first disciples that they forsook their boat and their nets, and even their aged father.

Matt. iv. 18–22.

Letter XXXIX. To Paula.

Blæsilla died within three months of her conversion, and Jerome now writes to Paula to offer her his sympathy and, if possible, to moderate her grief. He asks her to remember that Blæsilla is now in paradise, and so far to control herself as to prevent enemies of the faith from cavilling at her conduct. Then he concludes with the prophecy (since more than fulfilled) that in his writings Blæsilla’s name shall never die. Written at Rome in 389 a.d.

1. “Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears: that I might weep,” not as Jeremiah says, “For the slain of my people,”

Jer. ix. 1.

2. But what is this? I wish to check a mother’s weeping, and I groan myself. I make no secret of my feelings; this entire letter is written in tears. Even Jesus wept for Lazarus because He loved him.

John xi. 35, 36.

Letter XL. To Marcella.

Onasus, of Segesta, the subject of this letter, was among Jerome’s Roman opponents. He is here held up to ridicule in a manner which reflects little credit on the writer’s urbanity. The date of the letter is 385 a.d.

1. The medical men called surgeons pass for being cruel, but really deserve pity. For is it not pitiful to cut away the dead flesh of another man with merciless knives without being moved by his pangs? Is it not pitiful that the man who is curing the patient is callous to his sufferings, and has to appear as his enemy? Yet such is the order of nature. While truth is always bitter, pleasantness waits upon evil-doing. Isaiah goes naked without blushing as a type of captivity to come.

Isa. xx. 2.

2. It is not surprising, then, that by exposing their faults I have offended many. I have arranged to operate on a cancerous nose;

Nasus. A play on the name Onasus.

“Whose nostrils are disfigured by a scar?”

Virg. A. vi. 497.

Is Onasus of Segesta alone in puffing out his cheeks like bladders and balancing hollow phrases on his tongue?

I say that certain persons have, by crime, perjury, and false pretences, attained to this or that high position. How does it hurt you who know that the charge does not touch you? I laugh at a pleader who has no clients, and sneer at a penny-a-liner’s eloquence. What does it matter to you who are such a refined speaker? It is my whim to inveigh against mercenary priests. You are rich already, why should you be angry? I wish to shut up Vulcan and burn him in his own flames. Are you his guest or his neighbor that you try to save an idol’s shrine from the fire? I choose to make merry over ghosts and owls and monsters of the Nile; and whatever I say, you take it as aimed at you. At whatever fault I point my pen, you cry out that you are meant. You collar me and drag me into court and absurdly charge me with writing satires when I only write plain prose!

So you really think yourself a pretty fellow just because you have a lucky name!

Onasus means “lucky” or “profitable;” it is another form of Onesimus.

3. All the same, I will give you a hint what features to hide if you want to look your best. Show no nose upon your face and keep your mouth shut. You will then stand some chance of being counted both handsome and eloquent.

Letter XLI. To Marcella.

An effort having been made to convert Marcella to Montanism,

Montanus lived at Ardaban, in Phrygia, in the second half of the second century, and founded a sect of prophetic enthusiasts and ascetics, which was afterward joined by Tertullian.

1. As regards the passages brought together from the gospel of John with which a certain votary of Montanus has assailed you, passages in which our Saviour promises that He will go to the Father, and that He will send the Paraclete

Joh. xiv. 28; xv. 26.

2. If, then, the apostle Peter, upon whom the Lord has founded the Church,

Matt. xvi. 18.

3. In the first place we differ from the Montanists regarding the rule of faith. We distinguish the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as three persons, but unite them as one substance. They, on the other hand, following the doctrine of Sabellius,

A presbyter of the Libyan Pentapolis who taught at Rome in the early years of the third century. He “confounded the persons” of the Trinity and was subsequently accounted a heretic. Cf. Letter XV.

Letter XLII. To Marcella.

At Marcella’s request Jerome explains to her what is “the sin against the Holy Ghost” spoken of by Christ, and shows Novatian’s

Novatian, a Roman presbyter in the middle of the third century, held that the “lapsed,” who had failed during the persecutions, could not be readmitted to the church. His sect upheld an extreme moral puritanism, as is shown in the speech of Constantine to their bishop at the Council of Nicæa: “Acesius, you should set up a ladder to heaven, and go up by yourself alone.”

1. The question you send is short and the answer is clear. There is this passage in the gospel: “Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world nor in the world to come.”

Matt. xii. 32.

Letter XLIII. To Marcella.

Jerome draws a contrast between his daily life and that of Origen, and sorrowfully admits his own shortcomings. He then suggests to Marcella the advantages which life in the country offers over life in town, and hints that he is himself disposed to make trial of it. Written at Rome in 385 a.d.

1. Ambrose who supplied Origen, true man of adamant and of brass,

For the meaning of these epithets as applied to Origen see Letter XXXIII. § 1.

2. Have we, brute beasts that we are, ever done the like? Why, we yawn if we read for over an hour; we rub our foreheads and vainly try to suppress our languor. And then, after this great feat, we plunge for relief into worldly business once more.

I say nothing of the meals with which we dull our faculties, and I would rather not estimate the time that we spend in paying and receiving visits. Next we fall into conversation; we waste our words, we attack people behind their backs, we detail their way of living, we carp at them and are carped at by them in turn. Such is the fare that engages our attention at dinner and afterwards. Then, when our guests have retired, we make up our accounts, and these are sure to cause us either anger or anxiety. The first makes us like raging lions, and the second seeks vainly to make provision for years to come. We do not recollect the words of the Gospel: “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?”

Luke xii. 20.

Letter XLIV. To Marcella.

Marcella had sent some small articles as a present (probably to Paula and Eustochium) and Jerome now writes in their name to thank her for them. He notices the appropriateness of the gifts, not only to the ladies, but also to himself. Written at Rome in 385 a.d.

When absent in body we are wont to converse together in spirit.

Cf. Col. ii. 5.

Letter XLV. To Asella.

After leaving Rome for the East, Jerome writes to Asella to refute the calumnies by which he had been assailed, especially as regards his intimacy with Paula and Eustochium. Written on board ship at Ostia, in August, 385 a.d.

1. Were I to think myself able to requite your kindness I should be foolish. God is able in my stead to reward a soul which is consecrated to Him. So unworthy, indeed, am I of your regard that I have never ventured to estimate its value or even to wish that it might be given me for Christ’s sake. Some consider me a wicked man, laden with iniquity; and such language is more than justified by my actual sins. Yet in dealing with the bad you do well to account them good. It is dangerous to judge another man’s servant;

Rom. xiv. 4.

Letter XLVI. Paula and Eustochium to Marcella.

Jerome writes to Marcella in the name of Paula and Eustochium, describing the charms of the Holy Land, and urging her to leave Rome and to join her old companions at Bethlehem. Much of the letter is devoted to disposing of the objection that since the Passion of Christ the Holy Land has been under a curse. The date of the letter is a.d. 386. It is written from Bethlehem, which now becomes Jerome’s home for the remainder of his life.

1. Love cannot be measured, impatience knows no bounds, and eagerness can brook no delay. Wherefore we, oblivious of our weakness, and relying more on our will than our capacity, desire—pupils though we be—to instruct our mistress. We are like the sow in the proverb,

Sus Minervam.

2. Assuming that what we ask is for the best, our eagerness to obtain it is nothing to be ashamed of. And if all the Scriptures agree with our view, we are not too bold in urging you to a course to which you have yourself often urged us.

What are God’s first words to Abraham? “Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred unto a land that I will show thee.”

Gen. xii. 1.

Letter XLVII. To Desiderius.

Jerome invites two of his old friends at Rome, Desiderius and his sister (or wife) Serenilla, to join him at Bethlehem. It is possible but not probable that this Desiderius is the same with Desiderius of Aquitaine, who afterwards induced Jerome to write against Vigilantius.

An interval of seven years separates this letter (of which the date is 393 a.d.) from the preceding, and all the letters written during this period have wholly perished.

1. Surprised as I have been, my excellent friend, to read the language which your kindness has prompted you to hold concerning me, I have rejoiced that I possess the testimony of one both eloquent and sincere; but when I turn from you to myself I feel vexed that, owing to my unworthiness, your words of praise and eulogy rather weigh me down than lift me up. You know, of course, that I make it a principle to raise the standard of humility, and to prepare for scaling the heights by walking for the present in the lowest places. For what am I or what is my significance that I should have the voice of learning raised to bear witness of me, or that the palm of eloquence should be laid at my feet by one whose style is so charming that it has almost deterred me from writing a letter at all? I must, however, make the attempt in order that charity which seeks not her own

1 Cor. xiii. 5.

2. I offer my congratulations to you and to your holy and revered sister,

I.e. his wife. Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 5.

3. Several of my little pieces have flown away out of their nest, and have rashly sought for themselves the honor of publication. I have not sent you any lest I should send works which you already have. But if you care to borrow copies of them, you can do so either from our holy sister, Marcella, who has her abode upon the Aventine, or from that holy man, Domnio, who is the Lot of our times.

Cf. 2 Peter ii. 7, 8.

Letter XLVIII. To Pammachius.

An “apology” for the two books “against Jovinian” which Jerome had written a short time previously, and of which he had sent copies to Rome. These Pammachius and his other friends had withheld from publication, thinking that Jerome had unduly exalted virginity at the expense of marriage. He now writes to make good his position, and to do this makes copious extracts from the obnoxious treatise. The date of the letter is 393 or 394 a.d.

1. Your own silence is my reason for not having written hitherto. For I feared that, if I were to write to you without first hearing from you, you would consider me not so much a conscientious as a troublesome correspondent. But, now that I have been challenged by your most delightful letter, a letter which calls upon me to defend my views by an appeal to first principles, I receive my old fellow-learner, companion, and friend with open arms, as the saying goes; and I look forward to having in you a champion of my poor writings; if, that is to say, I can first conciliate your judgment to give sentence in my favor, and can instruct my advocate in all those points on which I am assailed. For both your favorite, Cicero, and before him—in his one short treatise—Antonius,

Marcus Antonius, a Roman orator spoken of by Cicero. Orator c. 5, De Oratore i. c. 21, 47, 48. His treatise “De ratione dicendi” is lost. See Quintal iii. 1, 192.

2. Certain persons find fault with me because in the books which I have written against Jovinian I have been excessive (so they say) in praise of virginity and in depreciation of marriage; and they affirm that to preach up chastity till no comparison is left between a wife and a virgin is equivalent to a condemnation of matrimony. If I remember aright the point of the dispute, the question at issue between myself and Jovinian is that he puts marriage on a level with virginity, while I make it inferior; he declares that there is little or no difference between the two states, I assert that there is a great deal. Finally—a result due under God to your agency—he has been condemned because he has dared to set matrimony on an equality with perpetual chastity. Or, if a virgin and a wife are to be looked on as the same, how comes it that Rome has refused to listen to this impious doctrine? A virgin owes her being to a man, but a man does not owe his to a virgin. There can be no middle course. Either my view of the matter must be embraced, or else that of Jovinian. If I am blamed for putting wedlock below virginity, he must be praised for putting the two states on a level. If, on the other hand, he is condemned for supposing them equal, his condemnation must be taken as testimony in favor of my treatise. If men of the world chafe under the notion that they occupy a position inferior to that of virgins, I wonder that clergymen and monks—who both live celibate lives—refrain from praising what they consistently practise. They cut themselves off from their wives to imitate the chastity of virgins, and yet they will have it that married women are as good as these. They should either be joined again to their wives whom they have renounced, or, if they persist in living apart from them, they will have to confess—by their lives if not by their words—that, in preferring virginity to marriage, they have chosen the better course. Am I then a mere novice in the Scriptures, reading the sacred volumes for the first time? And is the line there drawn between virginity and marriage so fine that I have been unable to observe it? I could know nothing, forsooth, of the saying, “Be not righteous overmuch!”

Eccl. vii. 16: see Ag. Jov. i. 14.

3. Does a man who speaks thus, I would ask you, condemn marriage? If I have called virginity gold, I have spoken of marriage as silver. I have set forth that the yields an hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold—all spring from one soil and from one sowing, although in amount they differ widely. Will any of my readers be so unfair as to judge me, not by my words, but by his own opinion? At any rate, I have dealt much more gently with marriage than most Latin and Greek writers;

E.g. Cyprian and Origen (Hom. i. in Jos.).

Letter XLIX. To Pammachius.

Jerome encloses the preceding letter, thanks Pammachius for his efforts to suppress his treatise “against Jovinian,” but declares these to be useless, and exhorts him, if he still has any hesitation in his mind, to turn to the Scriptures and the commentaries made upon them by Origen and others. Written at the same time as the preceding letter.

1. Christian modesty sometimes requires us to be silent even to our friends, and to nurse our humility in peace, where the renewal of an old friendship would expose us to the charge of self-seeking. Thus, when you have kept silence I have kept silence too, and have not cared to remonstrate with you, lest I should be thought more anxious to conciliate a person of influence than to cultivate a friend. But, now that it has become a duty to reply to your letter, I will endeavor always to be beforehand with you, and not so much to answer your queries as to write independently of them. Thus, if I have shown my modesty hitherto by silence, I will henceforth show it still more by coming forward to speak.

2. I quite recognize the kindness and forethought which have induced you to withdraw from circulation some copies of my work against Jovinian. Your diligence, however, has been of no avail, for several people coming from the city have repeatedly read aloud to me passages which they have come across in Rome. In this province, also, the books have already been circulated; and, as you have read yourself in Horace, “Words once uttered cannot be recalled.”

Hor. AP. 390.

3. I do not speak thus that I may provoke you to write on the subject yourself—although I know your zeal in the study of the sacred writings to be greater than my own—but that you may compel my tormentors to do so. They are educated; in their own eyes no mean scholars; competent not merely to censure but to instruct me. If they write on the subject, my view will be the sooner neglected when it is compared with theirs. Read, I pray you, and diligently consider the words of the apostle, and you will then see that—with a view to avoid misrepresentation—I have been much more gentle towards married persons than he was disposed to be. Origen, Dionysius, Pierius, Eusebius of Cæsarea, Didymus, Apollinaris, have used great latitude in the interpretation of this epistle.

1 Corinthians.

Letter L. To Domnio.

Domnio, a Roman (called in Letter XLV. “the Lot of our time”), had written to Jerome to tell him that an ignorant monk had been traducing his books “against Jovinian.” Jerome, in reply, sharply rebukes the folly of his critic and comments on the want of straightforwardness in his conduct. He concludes the letter with an emphatic restatement of his original position. Written in 394 a.d.

1. Your letter is full at once of affection and of complaining. The affection is your own, which prompts you unceasingly to warn me of impending danger, and which makes you on my behalf

Of safest things distrustful and afraid.

Virg. A. iv. 298.

The complaining is of those who have no love for me, and seek an occasion against me in my sins. They speak against their brother, they slander their own mother’s son.

Ps. l. 20.

2. Here we have a man who has reached perfection without a teacher, so as to be a vehicle of the spirit and a self-taught genius. He surpasses Cicero in eloquence, Aristotle in argument, Plato in discretion, Aristarchus in learning, Didymus, that man of brass, in the number of his books; and not only Didymus, but all the writers of his time in his knowledge of the Scriptures. It is reported that you have only to give him a theme and he is always ready—like Carneades

A philosopher of the Academy noted for his opposition to stoicism.

3. Pray, my dear father, warn this man not to hold language contrary to his profession, and not to undo with his words the chastity which he professes by his garb. Whether he elects to be a virgin or a married celibate—and the choice must rest with himself—he must not compare wives with virgins, for that would be to have striven in vain against Jovinian’s eloquence. He likes, I am told, to visit the cells of widows and virgins, and to lecture them with his brows knit on sacred literature. What is it that he teaches these poor women in the privacy of their own chambers? Is it to feel assured that virgins are no better than wives? Is it to make the most of the flower of their age, to eat and drink, to frequent the baths, to live in luxury, and not to disdain the use of perfumes? Or does he preach to them chastity, fasting, and neglect of their persons? No doubt the precepts that he inculcates are full of virtue. But if so, let him admit publicly what he says privately. Or, if his private teaching is the same as his public, he should keep aloof altogether from the society of girls. He is a young man—a monk, and in his own eyes an eloquent one (do not pearls fall from his lips, and are not his elegant phrases sprinkled with comic salt and humor?)—I am surprised, therefore, that he can without a blush frequent noblemen’s houses, pay constant visits to married ladies, make our religion a subject of contention, distort the faith of Christ by misapplying words, and—in addition to all this—detract from one who is his brother in the Lord. He may, however, have supposed me to be in error (for “in many things we offend all,” and “if any man offend not in word he is a perfect man”

Jas. iii. 2.

4. Let him spare himself, let him spare me, let him spare the Christian name. Let him realize his position as a monk, not by talking and arguing, but by holding his peace and sitting still. Let him read the words of Jeremiah: “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him.”

Lam. iii. 27, 28.

“‘I know full well: believe me, I have felt

The hero’s force when rising o’er his shield

He hurls his whizzing spear.’

Virgil, Æn. xi. 283, 284.

He is strong in argument, intricate and tenacious, one to fight with his head down. Often has he cried out against me in the streets from late one night till early the next. He is a well-built man, and his thews are those of an athlete. Secretly I believe him to be a follower of my teaching. He never blushes or stops to weigh his words: his only aim is to speak as loud as possible. So famous is he for his eloquence that his sayings are held up as models to our curly-headed youngsters.

Persius i. 29.

5. It is no difficult matter, my dear Domnio, to chatter at street corners or in apothecaries’ shops and to pass judgment on the world. “So-and-so has made a good speech, so-and-so a bad one; this man knows the Scriptures, that one is crazy; this man talks glibly, that never says a word at all.” But who considers him worthy thus to judge every one? To make an outcry against a man in every street, and to heap, not definite charges, but vague imputations, on his head, is nothing. Any buffoon or litigiously disposed person can do as much. Let him put forth his hand, put pen to paper, and bestir himself; let him write books and prove in them all he can. Let him give me a chance of replying to his eloquence. I can return bite for bite, if I like; when hurt myself, I can fix my teeth in my opponent. I too have had a liberal education. As Juvenal says, “I also have often withdrawn my hand from the ferule.”

Juv. i. 15.

Father, I too can launch a forceful spear,

And when I strike blood follows from the wound.

Virg. A. xii. 50, 51.

But if he refuses to write, and fancies that abuse is as effective as criticism, then, in spite of all the lands and seas and peoples which lie between us, he must hear at least the echo of my cry, “I do not condemn marriage,” “I do not condemn wedlock.” Indeed—and this I say to make my meaning quite clear to him—I should like every one to take a wife who, because they get frightened in the night, cannot manage to sleep alone.

Cic. pro Cælio xv.

Letter LI. From Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, to John, Bishop of Jerusalem.

A coolness had arisen between these two bishops in connection with the Origenistic controversy, which at this time was at its height. Epiphanius had openly charged John with being an Origenist, and had also uncanonically conferred priests’ orders on Jerome’s brother Paulinian, in order that the monastery at Bethlehem might henceforth be entirely independent of John. Naturally, John resented this conduct and showed his resentment. The present letter is a kind of half-apology made by Epiphanius for what he had done, and like all such, it only seems to have made matters worse. The controversy is fully detailed in the treatise “Against John of Jerusalem” in this volume, esp. §11–14.

An interesting paragraph (§9) narrates how Epiphanius destroyed at Anablatha a church-curtain on which was depicted “a likeness of Christ or of some saint”—an early instance of the iconoclastic spirit.

Originally written in Greek, the letter was (by the writer’s request) rendered into Latin by Jerome. Its date is 394 a.d.

To the lord bishop and dearly beloved brother, John, Epiphanius sends greeting.

1. It surely becomes us, dearly beloved, not to abuse our rank as clergy, so as to make it an occasion of pride, but by diligently keeping and observing God’s commandments, to be in reality what in name we profess to be. For, if the Holy Scriptures say, “Their lots shall not profit them,”

Jer. xii. 13, LXX.

Letter LII. To Nepotian.

Nepotian, the nephew of Heliodorus (for whom see Letter XIV.), had, like his uncle, abandoned the military for the clerical calling, and was now a presbyter at Altinum, where Heliodorus was bishop. The letter is a systematic treatise on the duties of the clergy and on the rule of life which they ought to adopt. It had a great vogue, and called forth much indignation against Jerome. Its date is 394 a.d.

1. Again and again you ask me, my dear Nepotian, in your letters from over the sea, to draw for you a few rules of life, showing how one who has renounced the service of the world to become a monk or a clergyman may keep the straight path of Christ, and not be drawn aside into the haunts of vice. As a young man, or rather as a boy, and while I was curbing by the hard life of the desert the first onslaughts of youthful passion, I sent a letter of remonstrance

Letter XIV. 9 v.

The chilly blood stands still around my heart.

Virgil, G. ii. 484.

Elsewhere he sings:

Old age bears all, even the mind, away.

And a little further on:

So many of my songs are gone from me,

And even my very voice has left me now.

Virgil, Ec. ix. 51, 54, 55.

2. But that I may not seem to quote only profane literature, listen to the mystical teaching of the sacred writings. Once David had been a man of war, but at seventy age had chilled him so that nothing would make him warm. A girl is accordingly sought from the coasts of Israel—Abishag the Shunamite—to sleep with the king and warm his aged frame.

1 Kings i. 1–4.

Letter LIII. To Paulinus.

Jerome urges Paulinus, bishop of Nola, (for whom see Letter LVIII.) to make a diligent study of the Scriptures and to this end reminds him of the zeal for learning displayed not only by the wisest of the pagans but also by the apostle Paul. Then going through the two Testaments in detail he describes the contents of the several books and the lessons which may be learned from them. He concludes with an appeal to Paulinus to divest himself wholly of his earthly wealth and to devote himself altogether to God. Written in 394 a.d.

1. Our brother Ambrose along with your little gifts has delivered to me a most charming letter which, though it comes at the beginning of our friendship, gives assurance of tried fidelity and of long continued attachment. A true intimacy cemented by Christ Himself is not one which depends upon material considerations, or upon the presence of the persons, or upon an insincere and exaggerated flattery; but one such as ours, wrought by a common fear of God and a joint study of the divine scriptures.

We read in old tales that men traversed provinces, crossed seas, and visited strange peoples, simply to see face to face persons whom they only knew from books. Thus Pythagoras visited the prophets of Memphis; and Plato, besides visiting Egypt and Archytas of Tarentum, most carefully explored that part of the coast of Italy which was formerly called Great Greece. In this way the influential Athenian master with whose lessons the schools

Gymnasia.

Letter LIV. To Furia.

A letter of guidance to a widow on the best means of preserving her widowhood (according to Jerome ‘the second of the three degrees of chastity’). Furia had at one time thought of marrying again but eventually abandoned her intention and devoted herself to the care of her young children and her aged father. Jerome draws a vivid picture of the dangers to which she is exposed at Rome, lays down rules of conduct for her guidance, and commends her to the care of the presbyter Exuperius (afterwards bishop of Toulouse). The date of the letter is 394 a.d.

1. You beg and implore me in your letter to write to you—or rather write back to you—what mode of life you ought to adopt to preserve the crown of widowhood and to keep your reputation for chastity unsullied. My mind rejoices, my reins exult, and my heart is glad that you desire to be after marriage what your mother Titiana of holy memory was for a long time in marriage.

i.e. a celibate.

Letter LV. To Amandus.

A very interesting letter. Amandus a presbyter of Burdigala (Bourdeaux) had written to Jerome for an explanation of three passages of scripture, viz. Matt. vi. 34, 1 Cor. vi. 18, 1 Cor. xv. 25, 26, and had in the same letter on behalf of a ‘sister’ (supposed by Thierry to have been Fabiola) put the following question: ‘Can a woman who has divorced her first husband on account of his vices and who has during his lifetime under compulsion married again, communicate with the Church without first doing penance?’ Jerome in his reply gives the explanations asked for but answers the farther question, that concerning the ‘sister,’ with an emphatic negative. Written about the year 394 a.d.

1. A short letter does not admit of long explanations; compressing much matter into a small space it can only give a few words to topics which suggest many thoughts. You ask me what is the meaning of the passage in the gospel according to Matthew, “take no thought for the morrow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Matt. vi. 34.

2. Secondly, you ask me concerning the passage in the first epistle of the blessed apostle Paul to the Corinthians where he says: “every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.”

1 Cor. vi. 18.

Letter LVI. From Augustine.

Augustine’s first letter to Jerome (printed in his correspondence in this Library as Letter XXVIII.): through a series of accidents it was not delivered until nine years after it had been written. In it Augustine comments on Jerome’s new Latin version of the O.T. and advises him in his future labours to adhere more closely to the text of the LXX. He also discusses Jerome’s account (in his commentary on the epistle to the Galatians) of the quarrel between Paul and Peter at Antioch. This according to Jerome was not a real misunderstanding but only one artificially ‘got up’ to put clearly before the Church the mischief of Christians conforming to the now obsolete Mosaic Law. Augustine strongly controverts this view and maintains that it is fatal to the veracity and authority claimed for scripture. Written from Hippo about the year 394 a.d.

Letter LVII. To Pammachius on the Best Method of Translating.

Written to Pammachius (for whom see Letter LXVI.) in a.d. 395. In the previous year Jerome had rendered into Latin Letter LI. (from Epiphanius to John of Jerusalem) under circumstances which he here describes (§2). His version soon became public and incurred severe criticism from some person not named by Jerome but supposed by him to have been instigated by Rufinus (§12). Charged with having falsified his original he now repudiates the charge and defends his method of translation (“to give sense for sense and not word for word” §5) by an appeal to the practice of classical (§5), ecclesiastical (§6), and N.T. (§§7–10) writers.

When at a subsequent period Rufinus gave to the world what was in Jerome’s opinion a misleading version of Origen’s First Principles, he appealed to this letter as giving him ample warranty for what he had done. See Letters LXXX, and LXXXI, and Rufinus’ Preface to the περί ᾽Αεχῶν in Vol. iii. of this series.

1. The apostle Paul when he appeared before King Agrippa to answer the charges which were brought against him, wishing to use language intelligible to his hearers and confident of the success of his cause, began by congratulating himself in these words: “I think myself happy, King Agrippa, because I shall answer for myself this day before thee touching all the things whereof I am accused by the Jews: especially because thou art expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews.”

Acts xxvi. 2, 3.

2. About two years ago the aforesaid Pope Epiphanius sent a letter

Letter LI. to John Bp. of Jerusalem.

Letter LVIII. To Paulinus.

In this his second letter to Paulinus of Nola Jerome dissuades him from making a pilgrimage to the Holy Places, and describes Jerusalem not as it ought to be but as it is. He then gives his friend counsels for his life similar to those which he has previously addressed to Nepotian, praises Paulinus for his Panegyric (now no longer extant) on the Emperor Theodosius, compares his style with those of the great writers of the Latin Church, and concludes with a commendation of his messenger, that Vigilantius who was soon to become the object of his bitterest contempt. Written about the year 395 a.d.

1. “A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things,”

Matt. xii. 35.

From a high beam he knots a hideous death.

Virgil, Æn. xii. 603.

The dying robber, on the contrary, exchanges the cross for paradise and turns to martyrdom the penalty of murder. How many there are nowadays who have lived so long that they bear corpses rather than bodies and are like whited sepulchres filled with dead men’s bones!

Matt. xxiii. 27.

2. As for you, when you hear the Saviour’s counsel: “if thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come follow me,”

Matt. xix. 21.

3. In speaking thus I am not laying myself open to a charge of inconsistency or condemning the course which I have myself taken. It is not, I believe, for nothing that I, like Abraham, have left my home and people. But I do not presume to limit God’s omnipotence or to restrict to a narrow strip of earth Him whom the heaven cannot contain. Each believer is judged not by his residence in this place or in that but according to the deserts of his faith. The true worshippers worship the Father neither at Jerusalem nor on mount Gerizim; for “God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

Joh. iv. 24.

4. Why, you will say, do I make these remote allusions? To assure you that nothing is lacking to your faith although you have not seen Jerusalem and that I am none the better for living where I do. Be assured that, whether you dwell here or elsewhere, a like recompense is in store for your good works with our Lord. Indeed, if I am frankly to express my own feelings, when I take into consideration your vows and the earnestness with which you have renounced the world, I hold that as long as you live in the country one place is as good as another. Forsake cities and their crowds, live on a small patch of ground, seek Christ in solitude, pray on the mount alone with Jesus,

Cf. Luke vi.

Letter LIX. To Marcella.

An answer to five questions put to Jerome by Marcella in a letter not preserved. The questions are as follows.

(1) What are the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard (1 Cor. ii. 9)? Jerome answers that they are spiritual things which as such can only be spiritually discerned.

(2) Is it not a mistake to identify the sheep and the goats of Christ’s parable (Matt. xxv. 31 sqq.) with Christians and heathens? Are they not rather the good and the bad? For an answer to this question Jerome refers Marcella to his treatise against Jovinian (II. §§18–23).

(3) Paul says that some shall be “alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord;” and that they shall be “caught up to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thess. iv. 15, 17). Are we to suppose this assumption to be corporeal and that those assumed will escape death? Yes, Jerome answers, but their bodies will be glorified.

(4) How is John xx. 17, “touch me not,” to be reconciled with Matt. xxviii. 9, “they came and held him by the feet”? In the one case, Jerome replies, Mary Magdalen failed to recognize the divinity of Jesus; in the other the women recognized it. Accordingly they were admitted to a privilege which was denied to her.

(5) Was the risen Christ before His ascension present only with the disciples, or was He in heaven and elsewhere as well? The latter according to Jerome is the true doctrine. “The Divine Nature,” he writes, “exists everywhere in its entirety. Christ, therefore, was at one and the same time with the apostles and with the angels; in the Father and in the uttermost parts of the sea. So afterwards he was with Thomas in India, with Peter at Rome, with Paul in Illyricum, with Titus in Crete, with Andrew in Achaia.” The date of the letter is a.d. 395 or a.d. 396.

Letter LX. To Heliodorus.

One of Jerome’s finest letters, written to console his old friend, Heliodorus, now Bp. of Altinum, for the loss of his nephew Nepotian who had died of fever a short time previously. Jerome tries to soothe his friend’s grief (1) by contrasting pagan despair or resignation with Christian hope, (2) by an eulogy of the departed both as man and presbyter, and (3) by a review of the evils which then beset the Empire and from which, as he contended, Nepotian had been removed. The letter is marked throughout with deep and sincere feeling. Its date is 396 a.d.

1. Small wits cannot grapple large themes but venturing beyond their strength fail in the very attempt; and, the greater a subject is, the more completely is he overwhelmed who cannot find words to unfold its grandeur. Nepotian who was mine and yours and ours—or rather who was Christ’s and because Christ’s all the more ours—has forsaken us his elders so that we are smitten with pangs of regret and overcome with a grief which is past bearing. We supposed him our heir, yet now his corpse is all that is ours. For whom shall my intellect now labour? Whom shall my poor letters desire to please? Where is he, the impeller of my work, whose voice was sweeter than a swan’s last song? My mind is dazed, my hand trembles, a mist covers my eyes, stammering seizes my tongue. Whatever my words, they seem as good as unspoken seeing that he no longer hears them. My very pen seems to feel his loss, my very wax tablet looks dull and sad; the one is covered with rust, the other with mould. As often as I try to express myself in words and to scatter the flowers of this encomium upon his tomb, my eyes fill with tears, my grief returns, and I can think of nothing but his death. It was a custom in former days for children over the dead bodies of their parents publicly to proclaim their praises and (as when pathetic songs are sung) to draw tears from the eyes and sighs from the breasts of those who heard them. But in our case, behold, the order of things is changed: to deal us this blow nature has forfeited her rights. For the respect which the young man should have paid to his elders, we his elders are paying to him.

2. What shall I do then? Shall I join my tears to yours? The apostle forbids me for he speaks of dead Christians as “them which are asleep.”

1 Thess. iv. 13.

3. To Thee, O Saviour Christ, do we Thy creatures offer thanks that, when Thou wast slain, Thou didst slay our mighty adversary. Before Thy coming was there any being more miserable than man who cowering at the dread prospect of eternal death did but receive life that he might perish! For “death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.”

Rom. v. 14.

4. Moreover before the resurrection of Christ God was “known in Judah” only and “His name was great in Israel” alone.

Ps. lxxvi. 1.

Letter LXI. To Vigilantius.

Vigilantius on his return to the West after his visit to Jerusalem (whither he had gone as the bearer of letters from Paulinus of Nola—see Letter LVIII. §11.) had openly accused Jerome of a leaning to the heresy of Origen. Jerome now writes to him in the most severe tone repudiating the charge of Origenism and fastening upon his opponent those of ignorance and blasphemy. He singles out for especial reprobation Vigilantius’s explanation of ‘the stone cut out without hands’ in Daniel and urges him to repent of his sins in which case he will have as much chance of forgiveness as the devil has according to Origen! The letter is often referred to as showing Jerome’s way of dealing with Origen’s works. Jerome subsequently wrote a refutation of Vigilantius’s work, of all his controversial writings the most violent and the least reasonable. See the translation of it in this volume. See also Letter CIX. The date of this letter is 396 a.d.

1. Since you have refused to believe your own ears, I might justly decline to satisfy you by a letter; for, if you have failed to credit the living voice, it is not likely that you will give way to a written paper. But, since Christ has shown us in Himself a pattern of perfect humility, bestowing a kiss upon His betrayer and receiving the robber’s repentance upon the cross, I tell you now when absent as I have told you already when present, that I read and have read Origen only as I read Apollinaris, or other writers whose books in some things the Church does not receive. I by no means say that everything contained in such books is to be condemned, but I admit that there are things in them deserving of censure. Still, as it is my task and study by reading many authors to cull different flowers from as large a number as possible, not so much making it an object to prove all things as to choose what are good. I take up many writers that from the many I may learn many things; according to that which is written “reading all things, holding fast those that are good.”

1 Th. v. 21. “Prove all things,” Vulg. and A.V.

2. Origen is a heretic, true; but what does that take from me who do not deny that on very many points he is heretical? He has erred concerning the resurrection of the body, he has erred concerning the condition of souls, he has erred by supposing it possible that the devil may repent, and—an error more important than these—he has declared in his commentary upon Isaiah that the Seraphim mentioned by the prophet

Isa. vi. 2. See Letter XVIII.

3. It is no small gain to know your own ignorance. It is a man’s wisdom to know his own measure, that he may not be led away at the instigation of the devil to make the whole world a witness of his incapacity. You are bent, I suppose, on magnifying yourself and boast in your own country that I found myself unable to answer your eloquence and that I dreaded in you the sharp satire of a Chrysippus.

A disciple of Cleanthes and Zeno, and after them the leading teacher of the Stoic school at Athens. He was born in 280 a.d.

Letter LXII. To Tranquillinus.

Tranquillinus, one of Jerome’s Roman friends, had written (1) to tell him of the stand that Oceanus was making against the Origenists at Rome, and (2) to ask whether any parts of Origen’s works might be studied with safety and profit. Jerome welcomes the tidings about Oceanus and answers the question of Tranquillinus in the affirmative. He classes Origen with Tertullian, Apollinaris and others whose works continued to be read in spite of their heresies. Written in 396 or 397 a.d.

1. Though I formerly doubted the fact, I have now proved that the links which bind spirit to spirit are stronger than any physical bond. For you, my reverend friend, cling to me with all your soul, and I am united to you by the love of Christ. I speak simply and sincerely to your spotless heart: the very paper on which you write, the very letters which you have formed—voiceless though they are—inspire in me a sense of your affection.

2. You tell me that many have been deceived by the mistaken teaching of Origen, and that that saintly man, my son Oceanus, is doing battle with their madness. I grieve to think that simple folk have been thrown off their balance, but I am rejoiced to know that one so learned as Oceanus is doing his best to set them right again. Moreover you ask me, insignificant though I am, for an opinion as to the advisability of reading Origen’s works. Are we, you say, to reject him altogether with our brother Faustinus, or are we, as others tell us, to read him in part? My opinion is that we should sometimes read him for his learning just as we read Tertullian, Novatus, Arnobius, Apollinarius and some other church writers both Greek and Latin, and that we should select what is good and avoid what is bad in their writings according to the words of the Apostle, “Prove all things: hold fast that which is good.”

1 Th. v. 21.

Letter LXIII. To Theophilus.

When the dispute arose between Jerome and Epiphanius on the one side and Rufinus and John of Jerusalem on the other (see Letter LI.), Theophilus bishop of Alexandria, being appealed to by the latter sent the presbyter Isidore to report to him on the matter. Isidore reported against Jerome and consequently Theophilus refused to answer several of his letters. Finally he wrote counselling him to obey the canons of the church. Jerome replies that to do this has always been his first object. He then remonstrates with Theophilus on his too great leniency towards the Origenists and declares it to be productive of the worst results. The date of the letter is probably 397 a.d.

Jerome to the most blessed pope

See note on Letter LVIII.

1. Your holiness will remember that at the time when you kept silence towards me, I never ceased to do my duty by writing to you, not taking so much into account what you in the exercise of your discretion were then doing as what it became me to do. And now that I have received a letter from your grace, I see that my reading of the gospel has not been without fruit. For if the frequent prayers of a woman changed the determination of an unyielding judge,

Luke xviii. 2–5.

2. I thank you for your reminder concerning the canons of the Church. Truly, “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”

Heb. xii. 6.

3. Many religious persons are displeased that you are so long-suffering in regard to that shocking heresy,

That of the Origenists.

Letter LXIV. To Fabiola.

Fabiola’s visit to Bethlehem had been shortened by the threatened invasion of the Huns which compelled Jerome and his friends to take refuge for a time on the seaboard of Palestine. Fabiola here took leave of her companions and set sail for Italy, but not until Jerome had completed this letter for her use (§22). It contains a mystical account of the vestments of the High Priest worked out with Jerome’s usual ingenuity and learning. Similar treatises are ascribed to Tertullian and to Hosius bishop of Cordova, but these have long since perished. Its date is 396 or 397 a.d.

Letter LXV. To Principia.

A commentary on Ps. XLV. addressed to Marcella’s friend and companion Principia (see Letter CXXVII.). Jerome prefaces what he has to say by a defence of his practice of writing for women, a practice which had exposed him to many foolish sneers. He deals with the same subject in his dedication of the Commentary of Sophronius. The date of the letter is 397 a.d.

Letter LXVI. To Pammachius.

Pammachius a Roman senator, had lost his wife Paulina one of Paula’s daughters, while she was still in the flower of her youth. It was not till two years had elapsed that Jerome ventured to write to him; and when he did so he dwelt but little on the life and virtues of Paulina. Probably there was but little to tell. The greater part of the letter is taken up with commendation of Pammachius himself who, in spite of his high rank and position, had become a monk and was now living a life of severe self-denial. Jerome speaks approvingly of the Hospice for Strangers which, in conjunction with Fabiola, Pammachius had set up at Portus, and describes his own somewhat similar institutions at Bethlehem. He also mentions Paula, Eustochium, and the dead Blæsilla, all in terms of the highest praise. The date of the letter is 397 a.d.

1. Supposing a wound to be healed and a scar to have been formed upon the skin, any course of treatment designed to remove the mark must in its effort to improve the appearance renew the smart of the original wound. After two years of inopportune silence my condolence now comes rather late; yet even so I am afraid that my present speech may be still more inopportune. I fear lest in touching the sore spot in your heart I may by my words inflame afresh a wound which time and reflection have availed to cure. For who can have ears so dull or hearts so flinty as to hear the name of your Paulina without weeping? Even though reared on the milk of Hyrcanian tigresses

Virgil, Æn. iv. 367.

2. The good ground of which we read in the parable brought forth fruit, some an hundred-fold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold.

Matt. xiii. 8.

3. Let me use for a moment the language of philosophy. According to the Stoics there are four virtues so closely related and mutually coherent that he who lacks one lacks all. They are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

Cf. Wisdom viii. 7.

Though woman, foremost in the high emprise,

Virg. A. i. 494.

would induce her husband to follow a like course. She would not forsake him but looked for the day when he would become a companion in salvation. Finding by several miscarriages that her womb was not barren, she could not give up all hope of having children and had to allow her own reluctance to give way to the eagerness of her mother-in-law and the chagrin of her husband. Thus she suffered much as Rachel suffered,

Gen. xxxv. 16.

4. We read that the wife of Phinehas the priest, on hearing that the ark of the Lord had been taken, was seized suddenly with the pains of travail and that she brought forth a son Ichabod and died a mother in the hands of the women who nursed her.

1 Sam. iv. 19–22.

5. The glowing gems which in old days adorned the neck and face of Paulina now purchase food for the needy. Her silk dresses and gold brocades are exchanged for soft woollen garments intended to keep out the cold and not to expose the body to vain admiration. All that formerly ministered to luxury is now at the service of virtue. That blind man holding out his hand, and often crying aloud when there is none to hear, is the heir of Paulina, is co-heir with Pammachius. That poor cripple who can scarcely drag himself along, owes his support to the help of a tender girl. Those doors which of old poured forth crowds of visitors, are now beset only by the wretched. One suffers from a dropsy, big with death; another mute and without the means of begging, begs the more appealingly because he cannot beg; another maimed from his childhood implores an alms which he may not himself enjoy. Still another has his limbs rotted with jaundice and lives on after his body has become a corpse. To use the language of Virgil:

Had I a hundred tongues, a hundred lips,

I could not tell men’s countless sufferings.

Virg. A. vi. 625, 627.

Such is the bodyguard which accompanies Pammachius wherever he walks; in the persons of such he ministers to Christ Himself; and their squalor serves to whiten his soul. Thus he speeds on his way to heaven, beneficent as a giver of games to the poor, and kind as a provider of shows for the needy. Other husbands scatter on the graves of their wives violets, roses, lilies, and purple flowers; and assuage the grief of their hearts by fulfilling this tender duty. Our dear Pammachius also waters the holy ashes and the revered bones of Paulina, but it is with the balm of almsgiving. These are the confections and the perfumes with which he cherishes the dead embers of his wife knowing that it is written: “Water will quench a flaming fire; and alms maketh an atonement for sins.”

Ecclus. iii. 30.

6. Who can credit the fact that one, who is the glory of the Furian stock and whose grandfathers and great grandfathers have been consuls, moves amid the senators in their purple clothed in sombre garb, and that, so far from blushing when he meets the eyes of his companions, he actually derides those who deride him! “There is a shame that leadeth to death and there is a shame that leadeth to life.”

Ecclus. iv. 25. Est confusio adducens peccatum: et est confusio adducens gloriam et gratiam, Vulg. Jerome probably quotes from memory. A.V. follows the Greek and the Vulg.