Primary texts

The Fathers, in longer form.

The works behind the catechesis — for the slower read.

Augustine, Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Symeon the New Theologian, Maximus the Confessor — the foundational voices of the Orthodox theological tradition.

81 works

St. Gregory of Nyssa

All texts St. Jerome

Letters I–LI — St. Jerome

Ep. I–III — Letter I. To Innocent.

Letter I. To Innocent. Not only the first of the letters but probably the earliest extant composition of Jerome (c. 370 a.d.). Innocent, to whom it is addressed, was one of the little band of enthusiasts whom Jerome gathered round him in Aquileia. He followed his friend to Syria, where he died in 374 a.d. (See Letter III., 3.) 1. You have frequently asked me, dearest Innocent, not to pass over in silence the marvellous event which has happened in our own day. I have declined the task from modesty and, as I now feel, with justice, believing myself to be incapable of it, at once because human language is inadequate to the divine praise, and because inactivity, acting like rust upon the intellect, has dried up any little power of expression that I have ever had. You in reply urge that in the things of God we must look not at the work which we are able to accomplish, but at the spirit in which it is undertaken, and that he can never be at a loss for words who has believed on the Word. 2. What, then, must I do? The task is beyond me, and yet I dare not decline it. I am a mere unskilled passenger, and I find myself placed in charge of a freighted ship. I have not so much as handled a rowboat on a lake, and now I have to trust myself to the noise and turmoil of the Euxine. I see the shores sinking beneath the horizon, “sky and sea on every side”; darkness lowers over the water, the clouds are black as night, the waves only are white with foam. You urge me to hoist the swelling sails, to loosen the sheets, and to take the helm. At last I obey your commands, and as charity can do all things, I will trust in the Holy Ghost to guide my course, and I shall console myself, whatever the event. For, if our ship is wafted by the surf into the wished-for haven, I shall be content to be told that the pilotage was poor. But, if through my unpolished diction we run aground amid the rough cross-currents of language, you may blame my lack of power, but you will at least recognize my good intentions. 3. To begin, then: Vercellæ is a Ligurian town, situated not far from the base of the Alps, once important, but now sparsely peopled and fallen into decay. When the consular was holding his visitation there, a poor woman and her paramour were brought before him—the charge of adultery had been fastened upon them by the husband—and were both consigned to the penal horrors of a prison. Shortly after an attempt was made to elicit the truth by torture, and when the blood-stained hook smote the young man’s livid flesh and tore furrows in his side, the unhappy wretch sought to avoid prolonged pain by a speedy death. Falsely accusing his own passions, he involved another in the charge; and it appeared that he was of all men the most miserable, and that his execution was just inasmuch as he had left to an innocent woman no means of self-defence. But the woman, stronger in virtue if weaker in sex, though her frame was stretched upon the rack, and though her Virg. A. iii. 193. I.e. the governor of the province. St. Jerome hands, stained with the filth of the prison, were tied behind her, looked up to heaven with her eyes, which alone the torturer had been unable to bind, and while the tears rolled down her face, said: “Thou art witness, Lord Jesus, to whom nothing is hid, who triest the reins and the heart. Thou art witness that it is not to save my life that I deny this charge. I refuse to lie because to lie is sin. And as for you, unhappy man, if you are bent on hastening your death, why must you destroy not one innocent person, but two? I also, myself, desire to die. I desire to put off this hated body, but not as an adulteress. I offer my neck; I welcome the shining sword without fear; yet I will take my innocence with me. He does not die who is slain while purposing so to live.” 4. The consular, who had been feasting his eyes upon the bloody spectacle, now, like a wild beast, which after once tasting blood always thirsts for it, ordered the torture to be doubled, and cruelly gnashing his teeth, threatened the executioner with like punishment if he failed to extort from the weaker sex a confession which a man’s strength had not been able to keep back. 5. Send help, Lord Jesus. For this one creature of Thine every species of torture is devised. She is bound by the hair to a stake, her whole body is fixed more firmly than ever on the rack; fire is brought and applied to her feet; her sides quiver beneath the executioner’s probe; even her breasts do not escape. Still the woman remains unshaken; and, triumphing in spirit over the pain of the body, enjoys the happiness of a good conscience, round which the tortures rage in vain. The cruel judge rises, overcome with passion. She still prays to God. Her limbs are wrenched from their sockets; she only turns her eyes to heaven. Another confesses what is thought their common guilt. She, for the confessor’s sake, denies the confession, and, in peril of her own life, clears one who is in peril of his. 6. Meantime she has but one thing to say: “Beat me, burn me, tear me, if you will; I have not done it. If you will not believe my words, a day will come when this charge shall be carefully sifted. I have One who will judge me.” Wearied out at last, the torturer sighed in response to her groans; nor could he find a spot on which to inflict a fresh wound. His cruelty overcome, he shuddered to see the body he had torn. Immediately the consular cried, in a fit of passion, “Why does it surprise you, bystanders, that a woman prefers torture to death? It takes two people, most assuredly, to commit adultery; and I think it more credible that a guilty woman should deny a sin than that an innocent young man should confess one.” 7. Like sentence, accordingly, was passed on both, and the condemned pair were dragged to execution. The entire people poured out to see the sight; indeed, so closely were the gates thronged by the out-rushing crowd, that you might have fancied the city itself to be migrating. At the very first stroke of the sword the head of the hapless youth was cut off, and the headless trunk rolled over in its blood. Then came the woman’s turn. She knelt down upon the ground, and the shining sword was lifted over her quivering neck. But though the headsman summoned all his strength into his bared arm, the moment it touched her flesh the fatal blade stopped short, and, lightly glancing over the skin, merely grazed it sufficiently to draw blood. The striker saw, with terror, his hand unnerved, and, amazed at his defeated skill and at his drooping sword, he whirled it aloft for another stroke. Again the blade fell forceless on the woman, sinking harmlessly on her neck, as though the steel feared to touch her. The enraged and panting officer, who had thrown open his cloak at the neck to give his full strength to the blow, shook to the ground the brooch which clasped the edges Ps. vii. 9. Text corrupt. St. Jerome of his mantle, and not noticing this, began to poise his sword for a fresh stroke. “See,” cried the woman, “a jewel has fallen from your shoulder. Pick up what you have earned by hard toil, that you may not lose it.” 8. What, I ask, is the secret of such confidence as this? Death draws near, but it has no terrors for her. When smitten she exults, and the executioner turns pale. Her eyes see the brooch, they fail to see the sword. And, as if intrepidity in the presence of death were not enough, she confers a favor upon her cruel foe. And now the mysterious Power of the Trinity rendered even a third blow vain. The terrified soldier, no longer trusting the blade, proceeded to apply the point to her throat, in the idea that though it might not cut, the pressure of his hand might plunge it into her flesh. Marvel unheard of through all the ages! The sword bent back to the hilt, and in its defeat looked to its master, as if confessing its inability to slay. 9. Let me call to my aid the example of the three children, who, amid the cool, encircling fire, sang hymns, instead of weeping, and around whose turbans and holy hair the flames played harmlessly. Let me recall, too, the story of the blessed Daniel, in whose presence, though he was their natural prey, the lions crouched, with fawning tails and frightened mouths. Let Susannah also rise in the nobility of her faith before the thoughts of all; who, after she had been condemned by an unjust sentence, was saved through a youth inspired by the Holy Ghost. In both cases the Lord’s mercy was alike shewn; for while Susannah was set free by the judge, so as not to die by the sword, this woman, though condemned by the judge, was acquitted by the sword. 10. Now at length the populace rise in arms to defend the woman. Men and women of every age join in driving away the executioner, shouting round him in a surging crowd. Hardly a man dares trust his own eyes. The disquieting news reaches the city close at hand, and the entire force of constables is mustered. The officer who is responsible for the execution of criminals bursts from among his men, and Staining his hoary hair with soiling dust, exclaims: “What! citizens, do you mean to seek my life? Do you intend to make me a substitute for her? However much your minds are set on mercy, and however much you wish to save a condemned woman, yet assuredly I—I who am innocent—ought not to perish.” His tearful appeal tells upon the crowd, they are all benumbed by the influence of sorrow, and an extraordinary change of feeling is manifested. Before it had seemed a duty to plead for the woman’s life, now it seemed a duty to allow her to be executed. 11. Accordingly a new sword is fetched, a new headsman appointed. The victim takes her place, once more strengthened only with the favor of Christ. The first blow makes her quiver, beneath the second she sways to and fro, by the third she falls wounded to the ground. Oh, majesty of the divine power highly to be extolled! She who previously had received four strokes without injury, now, a few moments later, seems to die that an innocent man may not perish in her stead. 12. Those of the clergy whose duty it is to wrap the blood-stained corpse in a winding-sheet, dig out the earth and, heaping together stones, form the customary tomb. The sunset comes on 8 Song of the Three Holy Children. Dan. vi. Susannah 45; the youth spoken of is Daniel. Virg. A. xii. 611. quickly, and by God’s mercy the night of nature arrives more swiftly than is its wont. Suddenly the woman’s bosom heaves, her eyes seek the light, her body is quickened into new life. A moment after she sighs, she looks round, she gets up and speaks. At last she is able to cry: “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do unto me?”11 13. Meantime an aged woman, supported out of the funds of the church, gave back her spirit to heaven from which it came. It seemed as if the course of events had been thus purposely ordered, for her body took the place of the other beneath the mound. In the gray dawn the devil comes on the scene in the form of a constable, asks for the corpse of her who had been slain, and desires to have her grave pointed out to him. Surprised that she could have died, he fancies her to be still alive. The clergy show him the fresh turf, and meet his demands by pointing to the earth lately heaped up, taunting him with such words as these: “Yes, of course, tear up the bones which have been buried! Declare war anew against the tomb, and if even that does not satisfy you, pluck her limb from limb for birds and beasts to mangle! Mere dying is too good for one whom it took seven strokes to kill.” 14. Before such opprobrious words the executioner retires in confusion, while the woman is secretly revived at home. Then, lest the frequency of the doctor’s visits to the church might give occasion for suspicion, they cut her hair short and send her in the company of some virgins to a sequestered country house. There she changes her dress for that of a man, and scars form over her wounds. Yet even after the great miracles worked on her behalf, the laws still rage against her. So true is it that, where there is most law, there, there is also most injustice. 15. But now see whither the progress of my story has brought me; we come upon the name of our friend Evagrius. So great have his exertions been in the cause of Christ that, were I to suppose it possible adequately to describe them, I should only show my own folly; and were I minded deliberately to pass them by, I still could not prevent my voice from breaking out into cries of joy. Who can fittingly praise the vigilance which enabled him to bury, if I may so say, before his death Auxentius of Milan, that curse brooding over the church? Or who can sufficiently extol the discretion with which he rescued the Roman bishop from the toils of the net in which he was fairly entangled, and showed him the means at once of overcoming his opponents and of sparing them in their discomfiture? But Such topics I must leave to other bards, Shut out by envious straits of time and space. Ps. cxviii. 6. Cf. Eccles. xii. 7. Lictor. An allusion to the well-known proverb, summum jus, summa injuria. A presbyter of Antioch and bishop, 388 a.d. He is mentioned again in Letters III., IV., V., XV. See Jerome De Vir. iii. The predecessor of Ambrose and an Arian. He was still living when Jerome wrote, but died 374. Damasus, who having successfully made good his claim to the papacy, in 369 condemned Auxentius in a council held at Rome. Virg. G. iv. 147, 148. St. Jerome I am satisfied now to record the conclusion of my tale. Evagrius seeks a special audience of the Emperor; importunes him with his entreaties, wins his favor by his services, and finally gains his cause through his earnestness. The Emperor restored to liberty the woman whom God had restored to life. 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, my steps will totter, and in the very effort of rising I shall find my feet give way. I am the prodigal son who although I have squandered all the portion entrusted to me by my father, have not yet bowed the knee in submission to him; not yet have I commenced to put away from me the allurements of my former excesses. And because it is only a little while since I have begun not so much to abandon my vices as to desire to abandon them, the devil now ensnares me in new toils, he puts new stumbling-blocks in my path, he encompasses me on every side. The seas around, and all around the main. 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. Valentinian I. Luke xv. 3–5. Luke xv. 11–32. Virg. A. v. 9. In Jerome’s day this term included all—whether hermits or cœnobites—who forsook the world and embraced an ascetic 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. hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have they entered into the heart of man,”25 I knew indeed before from the mystic declaration of the sacred volumes; but now, dearest Rufinus, I have had proof of it in my own case. For I who fancied it too bold a wish to be allowed by an exchange of letters to counterfeit to myself your presence in the flesh, hear that you are penetrating the remotest parts of Egypt, visiting the monks and going round God’s family upon earth. Oh, if only the Lord Jesus Christ would suddenly transport me to you as Philip was transported to the eunuch, and Habakkuk to Daniel, with what a close embrace would I clasp your neck, how fondly would I press kisses upon that mouth which has so often joined with me of old in error or in wisdom. But as I am unworthy (not that you should so come to me but) that I should so come to you, and because my poor body, weak even when well, has been shattered by frequent illnesses; I send this letter to meet you instead of coming myself, in the hope that it may bring you hither to me caught in the meshes of love’s net. 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 martyrs28), impelled me by his presence to believe the tidings. Even then, I must admit I still hesitated. For on the one hand he knew nothing either of your name or country: yet on the other what he said seemed likely to be true, agreeing as it did with the hint which had already reached me. At last the truth broke upon me in all its fulness, for a constant stream of persons passing through brought the report: “Rufinus is at Nitria, and has reached the abode of the blessed Macarius.”29 At this point I cast away all that restrained my belief, and then first really grieved to find myself ill. Had it not been that my wasted and enfeebled frame fettered my movements, neither the summer heat nor the dangerous voyage should have had power to retard the rapid steps of affection. Believe me, brother, I look forward to seeing you more than the storm-tossed mariner looks for his haven, more than the thirsty fields long for the showers, more than the anxious mother sitting on the curving shore expects her son. Cf. Eph. iii. 20. Acts viii. 26–30. Bel 33–36. Priests, monks, and others who, because they would not declare themselves Arians, were banished by order of Valens to Heliopolis in Phenicia. There were two hermits of this name in Egypt, and it is not certain which is meant. One of them was a disciple of Antony. 3. After that sudden whirlwind dragged me from your side, severing with its impious wrench the bonds of affection in which we were knit together, The dark blue raincloud lowered o’er my head: On all sides were the seas, on all the sky. I wandered about, uncertain where to go. Thrace, Pontus, Bithynia, the whole of Galatia and Cappadocia, Cilicia also with its burning heat, one after another shattered my energies. At last Syria presented itself to me as a most secure harbor to a shipwrecked man. Here, after undergoing every possible kind of sickness, I lost one of my two eyes; for Innocent, the half of my soul, was taken away from me by a sudden attack of fever. The one eye which I now enjoy, and which is all in all to me, is our Evagrius, upon whom I with my constant infirmities have come as an additional burden. We had with us also Hylas, the servant of the holy Melanium, who by his stainless conduct had wiped out the taint of his previous servitude. His death opened afresh the wound which had not yet healed. But as the apostle’s words forbid us to mourn for those who sleep, and as my excess of grief has been tempered by the joyful news that has since come to me, I recount this last, that, if you have not heard it, you may learn it; and that, if you know it already, you may rejoice over it with me. 4. Bonosus, your friend, or, to speak more truly, mine as well as yours, is now climbing the ladder foreshown in Jacob’s dream. He is bearing his cross, neither taking thought for the morrow nor looking back at what he has left. He is sowing in tears that he may reap in joy. As Moses in a type so he in reality is lifting up the serpent in the wilderness. This is a true story, and it may well put to shame the lying marvels described by Greek and Roman pens. For here you have a youth educated with us in the refining accomplishments of the world, with abundance of wealth, and in rank inferior to none of his associates; yet he forsakes his mother, his sisters, and his dearly loved brother, and settles like a new tiller of Eden on a dangerous island, with the sea roaring round its reefs; while its rough crags, bare rocks, and desolate aspect make it more terrible still. No peasant or monk is to be found there. Even the little Onesimus you know of, in whose kisses he used to rejoice as in those of a brother, in this tremendous solitude no longer remains at his side. Alone upon the island—or rather not alone, for Christ is with him—he sees the glory of God, which even The ascetic community at Aquileia, of which Jerome and Rufinus were the leaders, had been broken up, perhaps through the efforts of Lupicinus, the bishop of Stridon. Virg. A. iii. 193, 194: v. 9. See Letter I. Hor. C. i. 3, 8. See Letter I. § 15. A freedman of Melanium. A young Roman widow who had given up the world that she might adopt the ascetic life. She accompanied Rufinus to the East and settled with him on the Mount of Olives. She is mentioned again in Letters IV., XXXIX., XLV., and others. Jerome’s foster-brother who had accompanied him on his first visit to Rome. He was now living as a hermit on a small island in the neighborhood of Aquileia. See Letter VII. § 3. Gen. xxviii. 12. Matt. vi. 34. Luke ix. 62. Ps. cxxvi. 5. Nu. xxi. 9. Of this child nothing is known. St. Jerome the apostles saw not save in the desert. He beholds, it is true, no embattled towns, but he has enrolled his name in the new city. Garments of sackcloth disfigure his limbs, yet so clad he will be the sooner caught up to meet Christ in the clouds. No watercourse pleasant to the view supplies his wants, but from the Lord’s side he drinks the water of life. Place all this before your eyes, dear friend, and with all the faculties of your mind picture to yourself the scene. When you realize the effort of the fighter then you will be able to praise his victory. Round the entire island roars the frenzied sea, while the beetling crags along its winding shores resound as the billows beat against them. No grass makes the ground green; there are no shady copses and no fertile fields. Precipitous cliffs surround his dreadful abode as if it were a prison. But he, careless, fearless, and armed from head to foot with the apostle’s armor, now listens to God by reading the Scriptures, now speaks to God as he prays to the Lord; and it may be that, while he lingers in the island, he sees some vision such as that once seen by John. 5. What snares, think you, is the devil now weaving? What stratagems is he preparing? Perchance, mindful of his old trick, he will try to tempt Bonosus with hunger. But he has been answered already: “Man shall not live by bread alone.”51 Perchance he will lay before him wealth and fame. But it shall be said to him: “They that desire to be rich fall into a trap and temptations,”53 and “For me all glorying is in Christ.”54 He will come, it may be, when the limbs are weary with fasting, and rack them with the pangs of disease; but the cry of the apostle will repel him: “When I am weak, then am I strong,” and “My strength is made perfect in weakness.”55 He will hold out threats of death; but the reply will be: “I desire to depart and to be with Christ.”56 He will brandish his fiery darts, but they will be received on the shield of <span class="jl-fn-term" data-fn="1. The question you send is short and the answer is clear.

Ep. IV–VI — Letter IV. To Florentius.

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.) 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,”65 so contrariwise the report of your charity is so widespread that it is considered not so much praiseworthy to love you as criminal to refuse to do so. I pass over the countless instances in which you have supported Christ, fed, clothed, and visited Him. The aid you rendered to our brother Heliodorus in his need may well loose the utterance of the dumb. With what gratitude, with what commendation, does he speak of the kindness with which you smoothed a pilgrim’s path. I am, it is true, the most sluggish of men, consumed by an unendurable sickness; yet keen affection and desire have winged my feet, and I have come forward to salute and embrace you. I wish you every good thing, and pray that the Lord may establish our nascent friendship. 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. Rev. xiv. 4. John xiv. 2. Quoted from Tert. de C. F. ii. 7. Matt. xxv. 34–40. See introduction to Letter XIV. 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 and is clean, yea, is made white as snow; whilst I, stained with every sin, wait day and night with trembling to pay the uttermost farthing. But since “the Lord looseth the prisoners,”71 and resteth upon him who is of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at His words, perchance he may say even to me who lie in the grave of sin: “Jerome, come forth.”73 The reverend presbyter, Evagrius, warmly salutes you. We both with united respect salute the brother, Martinianus. I desire much to see him, but I am impeded by the chain of sickness. Farewell in Christ. 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. For my earnest prayer is that our infant friendship, firmly cemented as it is in Christ, may never be rent asunder by time or distance. We ought rather to strengthen the bond by an interchange of letters. Let these pass between us, meet each other on the way, and converse with us. Affection will not lose much if it keeps up an intercourse of this kind. 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, bishop of Augustodunum, copied, in which he has so Rufinus had been baptized at Aquileia about three years previously (371 a.d.). Cf. Ps. li. 7. Matt. v. 26. Ps. cxlvi. 7. Isa. lxvi. 2. Joh. xi. 43. Acc. to Vallarsi a hermit, who at this time lived near Cæsarea. Cf. Col. ii. 5. 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. Autun. St. Jerome eloquently explained the Song of Songs. A countryman of the aforesaid brother Rufinus, the old man Paul, writes that Rufinus has his copy of Tertullian, and urgently requests that this may be returned. Next I have to ask you to get written on paper by a copyist certain books which the subjoined list will show you that I do not possess. I beg also that you will send me the explanation of the Psalms of David, and the copious work on Synods of the reverend Hilary, which I copied for him at Trêves with my own hand. Such books, you know, must be the food of the Christian soul if it is to meditate in the law of the Lord day and night. 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, you may command me in turn. I will send you what you please; and do not suppose that an order from you will give me trouble. I have pupils devoted to the art of copying. Nor do I merely promise a favor because I am asking one. Our brother, Heliodorus, tells me that there are many parts of the Scriptures which you seek and cannot find. But even if you have them all, affection is sure to assert its rights and to seek for itself more than it already has. 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.”85 And from the way in which you reproach me for not having written, I perceive that this has been my lot with you. Shall I say, “I wrote often, but the bearers of my letters were negligent”? You will reply, “Your excuse is the old one of all who fail to write.” Shall I say, “I could not find any one to take my letters”? You will say that numbers of persons have gone from my part of the world to yours. Shall I contend that I have actually given them letters? They not having delivered them, will deny that 83 See the introd. to Letter X. This list has perished. I.e. Hilary of Poitiers. Rufinus. Ps. i. 2. I.e. the Scriptures. See the introd. to Letter XIV. Aristotle is the author of this remark. they have received them. Moreover, so great a distance separates us that it will be hard to come at the truth. What shall I do then? Though really not to blame, I ask your forgiveness, for I think it better to fall back and make overtures for peace than to keep my ground and offer battle. The truth is that constant sickness of body and vexation of mind have so weakened me that with death so close at hand I have not been as collected as usual. And lest you should account this plea a false one, now that I have stated my case, I shall, like a pleader, call witnesses to prove it. Our reverend brother, Heliodorus, has been here; but in spite of his wish to dwell in the desert with me, he has been frightened away by my crimes. But my present wordiness will atone for my past remissness; for, as Horace says in his satire: 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 sister87—to you a daughter in Christ—remains steadfast in her purpose, a piece of news which I owe in the first instance to you. For here where I now am I am ignorant not only as to what goes on in my native land, but even as to its continued existence. Even though the Iberian viper shall rend me with his baneful fangs, I will not fear men’s judgment, seeing that I shall have God to judge me. As one puts it: Shatter the world to fragments if you will: ’Twill fall upon a head which knows not fear. Bear in mind, then, I pray you, the apostle’s precept that we should make our work abiding; prepare for yourself a reward from the Lord in my sister’s salvation; and by frequent letters increase my joy in that glory in Christ which we share together.

Ep. VII–IX — Letter VII. To Chromatius, Jovinus, and <span class="jl-fn-t

Letter VII. To Chromatius, Jovinus, and Eusebius. 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 Hor. S. i. 3, 1–3. Mentioned again in Letter VII., § 4. The person meant is uncertain. Probably it was Lupicinus, bishop of Stridon, for whom see the next letter. Horace, C. iii. 3, 7, 8. Jovinus was archdeacon of Aquileia. All three became bishops—Chromatius of Aquileia, the others of unknown sees. St. Jerome naturally connects two of your number. Indeed, if the conditions of writing would only admit of it, I should amalgamate your names and express them under a single symbol. The very letter which I have received from you challenges me in each of you to see all three, and in all three to recognize each. When the reverend Evagrius transmitted it to me in the corner of the desert which stretches between the Syrians and the Saracens, my joy was intense. It wholly surpassed the rejoicings felt at Rome when the defeat of Cannæ was retrieved, and Marcellus at Nola cut to pieces the forces of Hannibal. Evagrius frequently comes to see me, and cherishes me in Christ as his own bowels. Yet as he is separated from me by a long distance, his departure has generally left me as much regret as his arrival has brought me joy. 2. I converse with your letter, I embrace it, it talks to me; it alone of those here speaks Latin. For hereabout you must either learn a barbarous jargon or else hold your tongue. As often as the lines—traced in a well-known hand—bring back to me the faces which I hold so dear, either I am no longer here, or else you are here with me. If you will credit the sincerity of affection, I seem to see you all as I write this. Now at the outset I should like to ask you one petulant question. Why is it that, when we are separated by so great an interval of land and sea, you have sent me so short a letter? Is it that I have deserved no better treatment, not having first written to you? I cannot believe that paper can have failed you while Egypt continues to supply its wares. Even if a Ptolemy had closed the seas, King Attalus would still have sent you parchments from Pergamum, and so by his skins you could have made up for the want of paper. The very name parchment is derived from a historical incident of the kind which occurred generations ago. What then? Am I to suppose the messenger to have been in haste? No matter how long a letter may be, it can be written in the course of a night. Or had you some business to attend to which prevented you from writing? No claim is prior to that of affection. Two suppositions remain, either that you felt disinclined to write or else that I did not deserve a letter. Of the two I prefer to charge you with sloth than to condemn myself as undeserving. For it is easier to mend neglect than to quicken love. 3. You tell me that Bonosus, like a true son of the Fish, has taken to the water. As for me who am still foul with my old stains, like the basilisk and the scorpion I haunt the dry places. Bonosus has his heel already on the serpent’s head, whilst I am still as food to the same serpent which by divine appointment devours the earth. He can scale already that ladder of which the psalms of degrees are a type; whilst I, still weeping on its first step, hardly know whether I shall ever be able to say: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”99 Amid the threatening billows of the world he is sitting in the safe shelter of his island, that is, of the church’s Chromatius and Eusebius were brothers. Philem. 12. See Pliny, H. N. xiii. 21. The Greek word ΙΧΘΥΣ represented to the early Christians the sentence ᾽Ιησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ `Υὼς Σωτήρ. Hence the fish became a favorite emblem of Christ. Tertullian connects the symbol with the water of baptism, saying: “We little fishes are born by our Fish, Jesus Christ, in water and can thrive only by continuing in the water.” The allusion in the text is to the baptism of Bonosus. See Schaff, “Ante-Nicene Christianity,” p. 279. Deut. viii. 15. Gen. iii. 14. Viz., Psa. cxx.–cxxxiv. Ps. cxxi. 1. See Letter III. pale, and it may be that even now, like John, he is being called to eat God’s book; whilst I, still lying in the sepulchre of my sins and bound with the chains of my iniquities, wait for the Lord’s command in the Gospel: “Jerome, come forth.”102 But Bonosus has done more than this. Like the prophet he has carried his girdle across the Euphrates (for all the devil’s strength is in the loins104), and has hidden it there in a hole of the rock. Then, afterwards finding it rent, he has sung: “O Lord, thou hast possessed my reins. Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving.”106 But as for me, Nebuchadnezzar has brought me in chains to Babylon, to the babel that is of a distracted mind. There he has laid upon me the yoke of captivity; there inserting in my nostrils a ring of iron, he has commanded me to sing one of the songs of Zion. To whom I have said, “The Lord looseth the prisoners; the Lord openeth the eyes of the blind.”108 To complete my contrast in a single sentence, whilst I pray for mercy Bonosus looks for a crown. 4. My sister’s conversion is the fruit of the efforts of the saintly Julian. He has planted, it is for you to water, and the Lord will give the increase. Jesus Christ has given her to me to console me for the wound which the devil has inflicted on her. He has restored her from death to life. But in the words of the pagan poet, for her There is no safety that I do not fear. You know yourselves how slippery is the path of youth—a path on which I have myself fallen, and which you are now traversing not without fear. She, as she enters upon it, must have the advice and the encouragement of all, she must be aided by frequent letters from you, my reverend brothers. And—for “charity endureth all things,”112—I beg you to get from Pope Valerian a letter to confirm her resolution. A girl’s courage, as you know, is strengthened when she realizes that persons in high place are interested in her. 5. The fact is that my native land is a prey to barbarism, that in it men’s only God is their belly, that they live only for the present, and that the richer a man is the holier he is held to be. Moreover, to use a well-worn proverb, the dish has a cover worthy of it; for Lupicinus is their priest. Like lips like lettuce, as the saying goes—the only one, as Lucilius tells us, at which Crassus ever laughed—the reference being to a donkey eating thistles. What I mean is that an unstable pilot Rev. x. 9, 10. John xi. 43. Jer. xiii. 4, 5. Job xl. 16 (said of Behemoth); cf. Letter XXII. § 11. Ps. cxxxix. 13. Ps. cxvi. 14, 15, P.B.V. Cf. 2 Kings xix. 28. Psa. cxxxvii. 3; cxlvi. 7, 8. Virg. A. iv. 298. Jerome again refers to his own frailty in Letters XIV. § 6, XVIII. § 11, and XLVIII. § 20. Papa. The word “pope” was at this time used as a name of respect (“father in God”) for bishops generally. Only by degrees did it come to be restricted to the bishop of Rome. Similarly the word "imperator,” originally applied to any Roman general, came to be used of the Emperor alone. Bishop of Aquileia. Phi. iii. 19. Sacerdos. In the letters this word generally denotes a bishop. Lupicinus held the see of Stridon. Cic. de Fin. v. 30. steers a leaking ship, and that the blind is leading the blind straight to the pit. The ruler is like the ruled. 6. I salute your mother and mine with the respect which, as you know, I feel towards her. Associated with you as she is in a holy life, she has the start of you, her holy children, in that she is your mother. Her womb may thus be truly called golden. With her I salute your sisters, who ought all to be welcomed wherever they go, for they have triumphed over their sex and the world, and await the Bridegroom’s coming, their lamps replenished with oil. O happy the house which is a home of a widowed Anna, of virgins that are prophetesses, and of twin Samuels bred in the Temple! Fortunate the roof which shelters the martyr-mother of the Maccabees, with her sons around her, each and all wearing the martyr’s crown! For although you confess Christ every day by keeping His commandments, yet to this private glory you have added the public one of an open confession; for it was through you that the poison of the Arian heresy was formerly banished from your city. You are surprised perhaps at my thus making a fresh beginning quite at the close of my letter. But what am I to do? I cannot refuse expression to my feelings. The brief limits of a letter compel me to be silent; my affection for you urges me to speak. I write in haste, my language is confused and ill-arranged; but love knows nothing of order. 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 says of the exchange of letters that it alone makes the absent present. The remark, though occurring in a work of fiction, is not untrue. For what more real presence—if I may so speak—can there be between absent friends than speaking to those whom they love in letters, and in letters hearing their reply? Even those Italian savages, the Cascans of Ennius, who—as Cicero tells us in his books on rhetoric—hunted their food like beasts of prey, were wont, before paper and parchment came into use, to exchange letters written on tablets of wood roughly planed, or on strips of bark torn from the trees. For this reason men called letter-carriers tablet-bearers, and letter-writers bark-users, because they used the bark of trees. How much more then are we, who live in a civilized age, bound not to omit a social duty performed by men who lived in a state of gross savagery, and were in some respects entirely ignorant of the refinements of life. The saintly Chromatius, look you, and the reverend Eusebius, brothers as much by compatibility of disposition Matt. xxv. 4. Luke ii. 36; Acts xxi. 9; 1 Sam. ii. 18. 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. Tabellarii, from tabella, a small tablet. Librarii, from liber, bark. as by the ties of nature, have challenged me to diligence by the letters which they have showered upon me. You, however, who have but just left me, have not merely unknit our new-made friendship; you have torn it asunder—a process which Lælius, in Cicero’s treatise, wisely forbids. Can it be that the East is so hateful to you that you dread the thought of even your letters coming hither? Wake up, wake up, arouse yourself from sleep, give to affection at least one sheet of paper. Amid the pleasures of life at home sometimes heave a sigh over the journeys which we have made together. If you love me, write in answer to my prayer. If you are angry with me, though angry still write. I find my longing soul much comforted when I receive a letter from a friend, even though that friend be out of temper with me. Letter IX. To Chrysogonus, a Monk of Aquileia. A bantering letter to an indifferent correspondent. Of the same date as the preceding. Heliodorus, who is so dear to us both, and who loves you with an affection no less deep than my own, may have given you a faithful account of my feelings towards you; how your name is always on my lips, and how in every conversation which I have with him I begin by recalling my pleasant intercourse with you, and go on to marvel at your lowliness, to extol your virtue, and to proclaim your holy love. Lynxes, they say, when they look behind them, forget what they have just seen, and lose all thought of what their eyes have ceased to behold. And so it seems to be with you. For so entirely have you forgotten our joint attachment that you have not merely blurred but erased the writing of that epistle which, as the apostle tells us, is written in the hearts of Christians. The creatures that I have mentioned lurk on branches of leafy trees and pounce on fleet roes or frightened stags. In vain their victims fly, for they carry their tormentors with them, and these rend their flesh as they run. Lynxes, however, only hunt when an empty belly makes their mouths dry. When they have satisfied their thirst for blood, and have filled their stomachs with food, satiety induces forgetfulness, and they bestow no thought on future prey till hunger recalls them to a sense of their need. Now in your case it cannot be that you have already had enough of me. Why then do you bring to a premature close a friendship which is but just begun? Why do you let slip what you have hardly as yet fully grasped? But as such remissness as yours is never at a loss for an excuse, you will perhaps declare that you had nothing to write. Had this been so, you should still have written to inform me of the fact.

Ep. X–XII — Letter X. To Paul, an Old Man of Concordia.

Letter X. To Paul, an Old Man of Concordia. Cic. Lælius, 76. See introd. to Letter XIV. 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. The date of the letter is 374 a.d. 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 of man’s curse was put off for nine hundred years, or even more, a period so long that it may be called a second immortality. Afterwards sin gradually grew more and more virulent, till the ungodliness of the giants brought in its train the shipwreck of the whole world. Then when the world had been cleansed by the baptism—if I may so call it—of the deluge, human life was contracted to a short span. Yet even this we have almost altogether wasted, so continually do our iniquities fight against the divine purposes. For how few there are, either who go beyond their hundredth year, or who, going beyond it, do not regret that they have done so; according to that which the Scripture witnesses in the book of Psalms: “the days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow.”130 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? Simply that I may describe in fitting terms your great age and hoary head as white as Christ’s. For see, the hundredth circling year is already passing over you, and yet, always keeping the commandments of the Lord, amid the circumstances of your present life you think over the blessedness of that which is to come. Your eyes are bright and keen, your steps steady, your hearing good, your teeth are white, your voice musical, your flesh firm and full of sap; your ruddy cheeks belie your white hairs, your strength is not that of your age. Advancing years have not, as we too often see them do, impaired the tenacity of your memory; the coldness of your blood has not blunted an intellect at once warm and wary. Your face is not wrinkled nor your brow furrowed. Lastly, no tremors palsy your hand or cause it to travel in crooked pathways over the wax on which you write. The Lord shows us in you the bloom of the resurrection that is to be ours; so that whereas in others who die by inches whilst yet living, we recognize the results of sin, in your case we ascribe See the Life of Paul in this volume. Elogium. Gen. vi. 4. Ps. xc. 10. 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. Rev. i. 14. A play on words: callidus, “wary,” is indistinguishable in sound from calidus, “warm.” St. Jerome it to righteousness that you still simulate youth at an age to which it is foreign. And although we see the like haleness of body in many even of those who are sinners, in their case it is a grant of the devil to lead them into sin, whilst in yours it is a gift of God to make you rejoice. 3. Tully in his brilliant speech on behalf of Flaccus describes the learning of the Greeks as “innate frivolity and accomplished vanity.” Certainly their ablest literary men used to receive money for pronouncing eulogies upon their kings or princes. Following their example, I set a price upon my praise. Nor must you suppose my demand a small one. You are asked to give me the pearl of the Gospel, “the words of the Lord,” “pure words, even as the silver which from the earth is tried, and purified seven times in the fire,”136 I mean the commentaries of Fortunatian and—for its account of the persecutors—the History of Aurelius Victor, and with these the Letters of Novatian; so that, learning the poison set forth by this schismatic, we may the more gladly drink of the antidote supplied by the holy martyr Cyprian. In the mean time I have sent to you, that is to say, to Paul the aged, a Paul that is older still. I have taken great pains to bring my language down to the level of the simpler sort. But, somehow or other, though you fill it with water, the jar retains the odor which it acquired when first used. If my little gift should please you, I have others also in store which (if the Holy Spirit shall breathe favorably), shall sail across the sea to you with all kinds of eastern merchandise. 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, and God’s handmaidens no fellowship with a sinner, The words quoted do not occur in the extant portion of Cicero’s speech. Matt. xiii. 46. Ps. xii. 7, P. B. V. For some account of this writer see Jerome, De V. iii. c. xcvii. A Roman annalist some of whose works are still extant. He was contemporary with but probably older than Jerome. A puritan of the third century who seceded from the Roman church because of the laxity of its discipline. I.e. the life of Paul the Hermit, translated in this vol. Hor. Ep. I. ii. 69; cf. T. Moore: “You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will: The scent of the roses will hang round it still.” 137 their masters’ crumbs. It was the Saviour’s mission to call sinners and not the righteous; for, as He said Himself, “they that be whole need not a physician.”145 He wills the repentance of a sinner rather than his death, and carries home the poor stray sheep on His own shoulders. So, too, when the prodigal son returns, his father receives him with joy. Nay more, the apostle says: “Judge nothing before the time.”149 For “who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth.”150 And “let him that standeth take heed lest he fall.”151 “Bear ye one another’s burdens.”152 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. And a treasure is often stowed in earthen vessels. Peter thrice denied his Lord, yet his bitter tears restored him to his place. “To whom much is forgiven, the same loveth much.”155 No word is said of the flock as a whole, yet the angels joy in heaven over the safety of one sick ewe. And if any one demurs to this reasoning, the Lord Himself has said: “Friend, is thine eye evil because I am good?”157 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.”158 And lest He should seem to preach more than he practised, He fulfilled His own precept in His life. For He washed His disciples’ feet, he received the traitor with a kiss, He conversed with the woman of Samaria, He spoke of the kingdom of heaven with Mary 149 155 Luke vii. 37 sqq. Matt. xv. 27. Matt. ix. 12, 13. Ezek. xxxiii. 11. Luke xv. 5. Luke xv. 20. Rom. xiv. 4. Gal. vi. 2. Cf. Prov. xiv. 12. Luke vii. 47. Luke xv. 7, 10. Matt. xx. 15. Matt. xviii. 3. Joh. xiii. 5. Luke xxii. 47. Joh. iv. 7. at His feet, and when He rose again from the dead He showed Himself first to some poor women. Pride is opposed to humility, and through it Satan lost his eminence as an archangel. The Jewish people perished in their pride, for while they claimed the chief seats and salutations in the market place, they were superseded by the Gentiles, who had before been counted as “a drop of a bucket.”165 Two poor fishermen, Peter and James, were sent to confute the sophists and the wise men of the world. As the Scripture says: “God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble.”166 Think, brother, what a sin it must be which has God for its opponent. In the Gospel the Pharisee is rejected because of his pride, and the publican is accepted because of his humility. 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.

Ep. XIII–XV — Letter XIII. To Castorina, His Maternal Aunt.

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.”168 For, since murder often springs from hate, the hater, even though he has not yet slain his victim, is at heart a murderer. Why, you ask, do I begin in this style? Simply that you and I may both lay aside past ill feeling and cleanse our hearts to be a habitation for God. “Be ye angry,” David says, “and sin not,” or, as the apostle more fully expresses it, “let not the sun go down upon your wrath.”169 What then shall we do in the day of judgment, upon whose wrath the sun has gone down not one day but many years? The Lord says in the Gospel: “If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”170 Woe to me, wretch that I am; woe, I had almost said, to you also. This long time past we 168 Luke vii. 40 sqq.: the heroine of this story is identified by Jerome with Mary Magdalene. Matt. xxviii. 1, 9. Matt. xxiii. 6, 7. Isa. xl. 15. Luke xviii. 9 sqq. Ps. iv. 4, LXX.; Eph. iv. 26. Matt. v. 23, 24. have either offered no gift at the altar or have offered it whilst cherishing anger “without a cause.” How have we been able in our daily prayers to say “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,”171 whilst our feelings have been at variance with our words, and our petition inconsistent with our conduct? Therefore I renew the prayer which I made a year ago in a previous letter, that the Lord’s legacy of peace may be indeed ours, and that my desires and your feelings may find favor in His sight. Soon we shall stand before His judgment seat to receive the reward of harmony restored or to pay the penalty for harmony broken. In case you shall prove unwilling—I hope that it may not be so—to accept my advances, I for my part shall be free. For this letter, when it is read, will insure my acquittal. 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. The date is 373 or 374 a.d. 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.”175 Take neither scrip nor staff. He is rich enough who is poor—with Christ. This is no longer extant. John xiv. 27. See Ep. lxxvii. 9. 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! He is armed to subdue the world, and out of His mouth proceeds a two-edged sword to mow down all that encounters it. But as for you, what will you do? Pass straight from your chamber to the battle-field, and from the cool shade into the burning sun? Nay, a body used to a tunic cannot endure a buckler; a head that has worn a cap refuses a helmet; a hand made tender by disuse is galled by a sword-hilt. Hear the proclamation of your King: “He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.”179 Remember the day on which you enlisted, when, buried with Christ in baptism, you swore fealty to Him, declaring that for His sake you would spare neither father nor mother. Lo, the enemy is striving to slay Christ in your breast. Lo, the ranks of the foe sigh over that bounty which you received when you entered His service. Should your little nephew hang on your neck, pay no regard to him; should your mother with ashes on her hair and garments rent show you the breasts at which she nursed you, heed her not; should your father prostrate himself on the threshold, trample him under foot and go your way. With dry eyes fly to the standard of the cross. In such cases cruelty is the only true affection. 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. Then will you seek the like privilege for your parents. Then will you intercede for me who have urged you forward on the path of victory. 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. I have passed through troubles like yours myself. Now it is a widowed sister who throws her caressing arms around you. Now it is the slaves, your foster-brothers, who cry, “To what master are you leaving us?” Now it is a nurse bowed with age, and a body-servant loved only less than a father, who exclaim: “Only wait till we die and follow us to our graves.” Perhaps, too, an aged mother, with sunken bosom and furrowed brow, recalling the lullaby with which she once soothed you, adds her entreaties to theirs. The learned may call you, if they please, The sole support and pillar of your house. The love of God and the fear of hell will easily break such bonds. 182 Rev. i. 7. Rev. i. 16. A reminiscence of Tertullian. Matt. xii. 30. Nepotian, afterwards famous as the recipient of Letter LII., and the subject of Letter LX. Phi. iii. 20, R.V. Virg. A. iv. 367. Pers. iii. 18. Virg. A. xii. 59. St. Jerome Scripture, you will argue, bids us obey our parents. Yes, but whoso loves them more than Christ loses his own soul. The enemy takes sword in hand to slay me, and shall I think of a mother’s tears? Or shall I desert the service of Christ for the sake of a father to whom, if I am Christ’s servant, I owe no rites of burial, albeit if I am Christ’s true servant I owe these to all? Peter with his cowardly advice was an offence to the Lord on the eve of His passion; and to the brethren who strove to restrain him from going up to Jerusalem, Paul’s one answer was: “What mean ye to weep and to break my heart? For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”189 The battering-ram of natural affection which so often shatters faith must recoil powerless from the wall of the Gospel. “My mother and my brethren are these whosoever do the will of my Father which is in heaven.”190 If they believe in Christ let them bid me God-speed, for I go to fight in His name. And if they do not believe, “let the dead bury their dead.”191 4. But all this, you argue, only touches the case of martyrs. Ah! my brother, you are mistaken, you are mistaken, if you suppose that there is ever a time when the Christian does not suffer persecution. Then are you most hardly beset when you know not that you are beset at all. “Our adversary as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour,”192 and do you think of peace? “He sitteth in the lurking-places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent; his eyes are privily set against the poor. He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den; he lieth in wait to catch the poor;”193 and do you slumber under a shady tree, so as to fall an easy prey? On one side self-indulgence presses me hard; on another covetousness strives to make an inroad; my belly wishes to be a God to me, in place of Christ, and lust would fain drive away the Holy Spirit that dwells in me and defile His temple. I am pursued, I say, by an enemy Whose name is Legion and his wiles untold; and, hapless wretch that I am, how shall I hold myself a victor when I am being led away a captive? 5. My dear brother, weigh well the various forms of transgression, and think not that the sins which I have mentioned are less flagrant than that of idolatry. Nay, hear the apostle’s view of the matter. “For this ye know,” he writes, “that no whore-monger or unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.”197 In a general way all that is of the devil savors of enmity to God, and what is of the devil is idolatry, since all idols are subject to him. Yet Paul elsewhere lays down the law in express and unmistakable terms, saying: “Mortify your members, which are upon the earth, laying aside fornication, uncleanness, evil 190 196 Eph. vi. 1. Matt. x. 37. Luke ix. 59, 60. Matt. xvi. 23. Acts xxi. 13. Luke viii. 21; Matt. xii. 50. Matt. viii. 22. Ps. x. 8, 9. Phi. iii. 19. Virg. A. vii. 337. Eph. v. 5. St. Jerome concupiscence and covetousness, which are idolatry, for which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh.”199 Idolatry is not confined to casting incense upon an altar with finger and thumb, or to pouring libations of wine out of a cup into a bowl. Covetousness is idolatry, or else the selling of the Lord for thirty pieces of silver was a righteous act. Lust involves profanation, or else men may defile with common harlots those members of Christ which should be “a living sacrifice acceptable to God.”202 Fraud is idolatry, or else they are worthy of imitation who, in the Acts of the Apostles, sold their inheritance, and because they kept back part of the price, perished by an instant doom. Consider well, my brother; nothing is yours to keep. “Whosoever he be of you,” the Lord says, “that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.”204 Why are you such a half-hearted Christian? 6. See how Peter left his net; see how the publican rose from the receipt of custom. In a moment he became an apostle. “The Son of man hath not where to lay his head,”207 and do you plan wide porticos and spacious halls? If you look to inherit the good things of the world you can no longer be a joint-heir with Christ. You are called a monk, and has the name no meaning? What brings you, a solitary, into the throng of men? The advice that I give is that of no inexperienced mariner who has never lost either ship or cargo, and has never known a gale. Lately shipwrecked as I have been myself, my warnings to other voyagers spring from my own fears. On one side, like Charybdis, self-indulgence sucks into its vortex the soul’s salvation. On the other, like Scylla, lust, with a smile on her girl’s face, lures it on to wreck its chastity. The coast is savage, and the devil with a crew of pirates carries irons to fetter his captives. Be not credulous, be not over-confident. The sea may be as smooth and smiling as a pond, its quiet surface may be scarcely ruffled by a breath of air, yet sometimes its waves are as high as mountains. There is danger in its depths, the foe is lurking there. Ease your sheets, spread your sails, fasten the cross as an ensign on your prow. The calm that you speak of is itself a tempest. “Why so?” you will perhaps argue; “are not all my fellow-townsmen Christians?” Your case, I reply, is not that of others. Listen to the words of the Lord: “If thou wilt be perfect go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come and follow me.”209 You have already promised to be perfect. For when you forsook the army and made yourself an eunuch for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, you did so that you might follow the perfect life. Now the perfect servant of Christ has nothing beside Christ. Or if he have anything beside Christ he is not perfect. And if he be not perfect when he has promised God to be so, his profession is a lie. But “the mouth that lieth slayeth the soul.”211 To conclude, then, if you are perfect you will not 203 209 So Jerome, although the Vulg. has “is.” Col. iii. 5, 6. Matt. xxvi. 15. Publicarum libidinum victimæ; words borrowed from Tertullian, de C. F. II. 12. Rom. xii. 1. Acts v., Ananias and Sapphira. Luke xiv. 33. Matt. iv. 18–20. Matt. ix. 9. Matt. viii. 20. Rom. viii. 17. Matt. xix. 21. Matt. xix. 12. Wisd. i. 11. set your heart on your father’s goods; and if you are not perfect you have deceived the Lord. The Gospel thunders forth its divine warning: “Ye cannot serve two masters,”212 and does any one dare to make Christ a liar by serving at once both God and Mammon? Repeatedly does He proclaim, “If any one will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”213 If I load myself with gold can I think that I am following Christ? Surely not. “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked.”214 7. I know you will rejoin that you possess nothing. Why, then, if you are so well prepared for battle, do you not take the field? Perhaps you think that you can wage war in your own country, although the Lord could do no signs in His? Why not? you ask. Take the answer which comes to you with his authority: “No prophet is accepted in his own country.”216 But, you will say, I do not seek honor; the approval of my conscience is enough for me. Neither did the Lord seek it; for when the multitudes would have made Him a king he fled from them. But where there is no honor there is contempt; and where there is contempt there is frequent rudeness; and where there is rudeness there is vexation; and where there is vexation there is no rest; and where there is no rest the mind is apt to be diverted from its purpose. Again, where, through restlessness, earnestness loses any of its force, it is lessened by what it loses, and that which is lessened cannot be called perfect. The upshot of all which is that a monk cannot be perfect in his own country. Now, not to aim at perfection is itself a sin. 8. Driven from this line of defence you will appeal to the example of the clergy. These, you will say, remain in their cities, and yet they are surely above criticism. Far be it from me to censure the successors of the apostles, who with holy words consecrate the body of Christ, and who make us Christians. Having the keys of the kingdom of heaven, they judge men to some extent before the day of judgment, and guard the chastity of the bride of Christ. But, as I have before hinted, the case of monks is different from that of the clergy. The clergy feed Christ’s sheep; I as a monk am fed by them. They live of the altar: I, if I bring no gift to it, have the axe laid to my root as to that of a barren tree. Nor can I plead poverty as an excuse, for the Lord in the gospel has praised an aged widow for casting into the treasury the last two coins that she had. I may not sit in the presence of a presbyter; he, if I sin, may deliver me to Satan, “for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved.”223 Under the old law he who disobeyed the priests was put outside the camp and stoned by the people, or else he was beheaded and expiated his contempt with his blood. But now the disobedient person is cut down with the spiritual sword, or he is expelled from the church and torn to pieces by ravening demons. Should the entreaties of your brethren induce you to take orders, I shall rejoice that you are lifted up, and fear lest you may be cast down. You will 217 223 Luke xvi. 13. Luke ix. 23. Matt. xiii. 58. Luke iv. 24. Joh. vi. 15. In the sacrament of baptism. Matt. iii. 10. Luke xxi. 1–4. Cf. Letter CXLVI. Deut. xvii. 5, 12. St. Jerome say: “If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.”225 I know that; but you should add what follows: such an one “must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, chaste, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, no striker but patient.”226 After fully explaining the qualifications of a bishop the apostle speaks of ministers of the third degree with equal care. “Likewise must the deacons be grave,” he writes, “not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. And let these also first be proved; then, let them minister, being found blameless.”227 Woe to the man who goes in to the supper without a wedding garment. Nothing remains for him but the stern question, “Friend, how camest thou in hither?” And when he is speechless the order will be given, “Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”228 Woe to him who, when he has received a talent, has bound it in a napkin; and, whilst others make profits, only preserves what he has received. His angry lord shall rebuke him in a moment. “Thou wicked servant,” he will say, “wherefore gavest thou not my money into the bank that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury?”229 That is to say, you should have laid before the altar what you were not able to bear. For whilst you, a slothful trader, keep a penny in your hands, you occupy the place of another who might double the money. Wherefore, as he who ministers well purchases to himself a good degree, so he who approaches the cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 9. Not all bishops are bishops indeed. You consider Peter; mark Judas as well. You notice Stephen; look also on Nicolas, sentenced in the Apocalypse by the Lord’s own lips, whose shameful imaginations gave rise to the heresy of the Nicolaitans. “Let a man examine himself and so let him come.”233 For it is not ecclesiastical rank that makes a man a Christian. The centurion Cornelius was still a heathen when he was cleansed by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Daniel was but a child when he judged the elders. Amos was stripping mulberry bushes when, in a moment, he was made a prophet. David was only a shepherd when he was chosen to be king. And the least of His disciples was the one whom Jesus loved the most. My brother, sit down in the lower room, that when one less honorable comes you may be bidden to go up higher. Upon whom does the Lord rest but upon him that is lowly and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at His word? To whom God has committed much, of him He will ask the more. “Mighty men shall be mightily tormented.”240 No man need pride himself in the day of judgment on merely physical chastity, for 231 237 1 Tim. iii. 2, 3. Matt. xxii. 11–13. Luke xix. 23. 1 Cor. xi. 27. Rev. ii. 6. Susannah 45 sqq. Amos vii. 14. Luke xiv. 10. Isa. lxvi. 2. Luke xii. 48. Wisd. vi. 6. St. Jerome then shall men give account for every idle word, and the reviling of a brother shall be counted as the sin of murder. Paul and Peter now reign with Christ, and it is not easy to take the place of the one or to hold the office of the other. There may come an angel to rend the veil of your temple, and to remove your candlestick out of its place. If you intend to build the tower, first count the cost. Salt that has lost its savor is good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of swine. If a monk fall, a priest shall intercede for him; but who shall intercede for a fallen priest? 10. At last my discourse is clear of the reefs: at last this frail bark has passed from the breakers into deep water. I may now spread my sails to the breeze; and, as I leave the rocks of controversy astern, my epilogue will be like the joyful shout of mariners. O desert, bright with the flowers of Christ! O solitude whence come the stones of which, in the Apocalypse, the city of the great king is built! O wilderness, gladdened with God’s especial presence! What keeps you in the world, my brother, you who are above the world? How long shall gloomy roofs oppress you? How long shall smoky cities immure you? Believe me, I have more light than you. Sweet it is to lay aside the weight of the body and to soar into the pure bright ether. Do you dread poverty? Christ calls the poor blessed. Does toil frighten you? No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow. Are you anxious as regards food? Faith fears no famine. Do you dread the bare ground for limbs wasted with fasting? The Lord lies there beside you. Do you recoil from an unwashed head and uncombed hair? Christ is your true head. Does the boundless solitude of the desert terrify you? In the spirit you may walk always in paradise. Do but turn your thoughts thither and you will be no more in the desert. Is your skin rough and scaly because you no longer bathe? He that is once washed in Christ needeth not to wash again. To all your objections the apostle gives this one brief answer: “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory” which shall come after them, “which shall be revealed in us.”252 You are too greedy of enjoyment, my brother, if you wish to rejoice with the world here, and to reign with Christ hereafter. 11. It shall come, it shall come, that day when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. Then shall that servant be blessed whom the Lord shall find watching. Then at the sound of the trumpet the earth and its peoples shall tremble, but you shall rejoice. The world shall howl at the Lord who comes to judge it, and the tribes of the earth shall smite the breast. Once mighty kings shall tremble in their nakedness. Venus shall be exposed, and her son too. Jupiter with his fiery bolts will be brought to trial; and Plato, with his disciples, will be but a fool. Aristotle’s arguments shall be of no avail. You may seem a poor man and country 247 253 Matt. xii. 36. Matt. v. 21, 22. Matt. xxvii. 51. Rev. ii. 5. Luke xiv. 28. Matt. v. 13. Rev. xxi. 19, 20. From Cyprian, Letter I. 14 (to Donatus). Luke vi. 20. From Cyprian, Letter LXXVII. 2 (to Nemesianus). Joh. xiii. 10. Rom. viii. 18. Matt. xxiv. 46. bred, but then you shall exult and laugh, and say: Behold my crucified Lord, behold my judge. This is He who was once an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and crying in a manger. This is He whose parents were a workingman and a working-woman. This is He, who, carried into Egypt in His mother’s bosom, though He was God, fled before the face of man. This is He who was clothed in a scarlet robe and crowned with thorns. This is He who was called a sorcerer and a man with a devil and a Samaritan. Jew, behold the hands which you nailed to the cross. Roman, behold the side which you pierced with the spear. See both of you whether it was this body that the disciples stole secretly and by night. For this you profess to believe. My brother, it is affection which has urged me to speak thus; that you who now find the Christian life so hard may have your reward in that day. 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,”261 since the foxes are destroying the vineyard of Christ, and since among the broken cisterns that hold no water it is hard to discover “the sealed fountain” and “the garden inclosed,”263 I think it my duty to consult the chair of Peter, and to turn to a church whose faith has been praised by Paul. I appeal for spiritual food to the church whence I have received the garb of Christ. The wide space of sea and land that lies between us cannot deter me from searching for “the pearl of great price.”266 “Wheresoever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”267 Evil children have squandered their patrimony; you alone keep your heritage intact. The fruitful soil of Rome, when it receives the pure seed of the Lord, bears fruit an hundredfold; but here the seed corn is 262 Luke ii. 7. From Tertullian, de Spect. xxx. Matt. xxvii. 28, 29. Joh. viii. 48. Matt. xxvii. 64. Joh. xix. 23. Cant. ii. 15. Cant. iv. 12. Rom. i. 8: I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. I.e. holy baptism; cf. Gal. iii. 27. Matt. xiii. 46. Matt. xxiv. 28. St. Jerome choked in the furrows and nothing grows but darnel or oats. In the West the Sun of righteousness is even now rising; in the East, Lucifer, who fell from heaven, has once more set his throne above the stars. “Ye are the light of the world,”272 “ye are the salt of the earth,”273 ye are “vessels of gold and of silver.” Here are vessels of wood or of earth, which wait for the rod of iron, and eternal fire. 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! This is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten.

Ep. XVI–XVIII — Letter XVI. To Pope Damasus.

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, and by the same means one friend induced another to give him bread at midnight, when his door was shut and his servants were in bed. The publican’s prayers overcame God, although God is invincible. Nineveh was saved by its tears from the impending ruin caused by its sin. To what end, you ask, these far-fetched references? To this end, I make answer; that you in your greatness should look upon me in my littleness; that you, the rich shepherd, should not despise me, the ailing sheep. Christ Himself brought the robber from the cross to paradise, and, to show that repentance is never too late, He turned a murderer’s death into a martyrdom. Gladly does Christ embrace the prodigal son when he returns to Him; and, leaving the ninety and nine, the good shepherd carries home on His shoulders the one poor sheep that is left. From a persecutor Paul becomes a preacher. His bodily eyes are blinded to clear the eyes of his soul, and he who once haled Christ’s servants in chains before the council of the Jews, lives afterwards to glory in the bonds of Christ. I.e. the followers of the orthodox Bishop Meletius, who, as they had no church in Antioch, were compelled to meet for worship outside the city. These appear to have been semi-Arians or Macedonians. Silvanus of Tarsus was their recognized leader. Matt. xv. 28. Luke xi. 7, 8. Luke xviii. 10–14. Jon. iii. 5, 10. Luke xxiii. 43. Luke xv. 20. Luke xv. 5. Acts ix. 8. Acts viii. 3. 2. As I have already written to you, I, who have received Christ’s garb in Rome, am now detained in the waste that borders Syria. No sentence of banishment, however, has been passed upon me; the punishment which I am undergoing is self-inflicted. But, as the heathen poet says: They change not mind but sky who cross the sea. 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 all profess to cleave to you, and I could believe the assertion if it were made by one of them only. As it is, either two of them or else all three are guilty of falsehood. Therefore I implore your blessedness, by our Lord’s cross and passion, those necessary glories of our faith, as you hold an apostolic office, to give an apostolic decision. Only tell me by letter with whom I am to communicate in Syria, and I will pray for you that you may sit in judgment enthroned with the twelve; that when you grow old, like Peter, you may be girded not by yourself but by another, and that, like Paul, you may be made a citizen of the heavenly kingdom. Do not despise a soul for which Christ died. 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”310 and “I, as a deaf man, heard not; and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth. Thus I was as a man that heareth not.”311 But charity overcomes all things, and my regard for you defeats my determination. I am, indeed, less careful to retaliate upon my assailants than to comply with your request. For See Letter XV. Hor. Epist. i. 11, 27. 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. Matt. xix. 28. Joh. xxi. 18. Phi. iii. 20, R.V. Ps. xxxix. 1, 2, Vulg. Ps. xxxviii. 13, 14. Cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 7. among Christians, as one has said, not he who endures an outrage is unhappy, but he who commits it. 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. 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, real, whole, and perfect persons. The Arians do right to accuse me, but the orthodox forfeit their orthodoxy when they assail a faith like mine. They may, if they like, condemn me as a heretic; but if they do they must also condemn Egypt and the West, Damasus and Peter. Why do they fasten the guilt on one and leave his companions uncensured? If there is but little water in the stream, it is the fault, not of the channel, but of the source. I blush to say it, but from the caves which serve us for cells we monks of the desert condemn the world. Rolling in sack-cloth and ashes, we pass sentence on bishops. What use is the robe of a penitent if it covers the pride of a king? Chains, squalor, and long hair are by right tokens of sorrow, and not ensigns of royalty. I merely ask leave to remain silent. Why do they torment a man who does not deserve their ill-will? I am a heretic, you say. What is it to you if I am? Stay quiet, and all is said. You are afraid, I suppose, that, with my fluent knowledge of Syriac and Greek, I shall make a tour of the churches, lead the people into error, and form a schism! I have robbed no man of anything; neither have I taken what I have not earned. With my own hand daily and in the sweat of my brow I labor for my food, knowing that it is written by the apostle: “If any will not work, neither shall he eat.”320 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.”321 I cannot have so much as a corner of the desert. Every day I am asked for my confession of faith; as though when I was regenerated in baptism I had made none. I accept their formulas, but they are still dissatisfied. I sign my name to them, but they still refuse to believe me. One thing only will content them, that I should leave the country. I am on the point of departure. They have already torn away from me my dear brothers, who are a part of my very life. They are, as you see, anxious to depart—nay, they are actually departing; it is preferable, they say, to live among wild beasts rather than with Christians such as these. I myself, too, would be at this moment a fugitive were I not 319 Cyprian, Letter LV. Cf. Cic. T. Q. v. accipere quam facere præstat injuriam. Virg. A. i. 539–541. Subsistenets. The contemporary bishops of Rome and Alexandria. Tert. Apol. 40, s. f. Gen. iii. 19. Isa. xlii. 14, LXX. withheld by physical infirmity and by the severity of the winter. I ask to be allowed the shelter of the desert for a few months till spring returns; or if this seems too long a delay, I am ready to depart now. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.”322 Let them climb up to heaven alone; for them alone Christ died; they possess all things and glory in all. Be it so. “But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.”324 4. As regards the questions which you have thought fit to put to me concerning the faith, I have given to the reverend Cyril a written confession which sufficiently answers them. He who does not so believe has no part in Christ. My faith is attested both by your ears and by those of your blessed brother, Zenobius, to whom, as well as to yourself, we all of us here send our best greeting. 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 that it was Christ and not the Father whom the prophet saw.” And again, “The word seraphim means either ‘glow’ or ‘beginning of speech,’ and the two seraphim thus stand for the Old and New Testaments. ‘Did not our heart burn within us,’ said the disciples, ‘while he opened to us the Scriptures?’328 Moreover, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, and this unquestionably was man’s original language.” Jerome then speaks of the unity of the sacred books. “Whatever,” he asserts, “we read in the Old Testament we find also in the Gospel; and what we read in the Gospel is deduced from the Old Testament. There is no discord between them, no disagreement. In both Testaments the Trinity is preached.” 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. 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 Ps. xxiv. 1. Was Jerome thinking of Constantine’s rebuke to the Novatian bishop at Nicæa, “Plant a ladder for thyself, Acesius, and mount alone to heaven”? Gal. vi. 14. Who this was is unknown. The extant document purporting to contain this confession is not genuine. John xii. 41. Jerome greatly prides himself on this explanation, and frequently reverts to it. Luke xxiv. 32. Cf. Augustine’s dictum: “The New Testament is latent in the Old; the Old Testament is patent in the New.” See Augustine’s letters to Jerome, passim. 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.

Ep. XIX–XXI — Letter XIX. From Pope Damasus.

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.

Ep. XXII–XXIV — Letter XXII. To Eustochium.

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.”331 In this forty-fourth psalm God speaks to Ps. xlv. 10, 11. According to the Vulgate. St. Jerome the human soul that, following the example of Abraham, it should go out from its own land and from its kindred, and should leave the Chaldeans, that is the demons, and should dwell in the country of the living, for which elsewhere the prophet sighs: “I think to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.”334 But it is not enough for you to go out from your own land unless you forget your people and your father’s house; unless you scorn the flesh and cling to the bridegroom in a close embrace. “Look not behind thee,” he says, “neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain lest thou be consumed.”335 He who has grasped the plough must not look behind him or return home from the field, or having Christ’s garment, descend from the roof to fetch other raiment. Truly a marvellous thing, a father charges his daughter not to remember her father. “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do.”338 So it was said to the Jews. And in another place, “He that committeth sin is of the devil.”339 Born, in the first instance, of such parentage we are naturally black, and even when we have repented, so long as we have not scaled the heights of virtue, we may still say: “I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.”340 But you will say to me, “I have left the home of my childhood; I have forgotten my father, I am born anew in Christ. What reward do I receive for this?” The context shows—“The king shall desire thy beauty.” This, then, is the great mystery. “For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be” not as is there said, “of one flesh,”341 but “of one spirit.” Your bridegroom is not haughty or disdainful; He has “married an Ethiopian woman.”342 When once you desire the wisdom of the true Solomon and come to Him, He will avow all His knowledge to you; He will lead you into His chamber with His royal hand; He will miraculously change your complexion so that it shall be said of you, “Who is this that goeth up and hath been made white?”344 2. I write to you thus, Lady Eustochium (I am bound to call my Lord’s bride “lady”), to show you by my opening words that my object is not to praise the virginity which you follow, and of which you have proved the value, or yet to recount the drawbacks of marriage, such as pregnancy, the crying of infants, the torture caused by a rival, the cares of household management, and all those fancied blessings which death at last cuts short. Not that married women are as such outside the pale; they have their own place, the marriage that is honorable and the bed undefiled. My purpose is to show you that you are fleeing from Sodom and should take warning by Lot’s wife. There is no flattery, I can tell you, in these pages. A flatterer’s words are fair, but for all that he is 339 345 Gen. xi. 31; xii. 1. Ps. xxvii. 13. Gen. xix. 17. Luke ix. 62. Matt. xxiv. 17, 18. Joh. viii. 44, R.V. Cant. i. 5. Eph. v. 31, 32. Nu. xii. 1. Cant. i. 4. Cant. viii. 5, LXX. Heb. xiii. 4. Gen. xix. 26. an enemy. You need expect no rhetorical flourishes setting you among the angels, and while they extol virginity as blessed, putting the world at your feet. 3. I would have you draw from your monastic vow not pride but fear. You walk laden with gold; you must keep out of the robber’s way. To us men this life is a race-course: we contend here, we are crowned elsewhere. No man can lay aside fear while serpents and scorpions beset his path. The Lord says: “My sword hath drunk its fill in heaven,”348 and do you expect to find peace on the earth? No, the earth yields only thorns and thistles, and its dust is food for the serpent. “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”350 We are hemmed in by hosts of foes, our enemies are upon every side. The weak flesh will soon be ashes: one against many, it fights against tremendous odds. Not till it has been dissolved, not till the Prince of this world has come and found no sin therein, not till then may you safely listen to the prophet’s words: “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the trouble which haunteth thee in darkness; nor for the demon and his attacks at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.”352 When the hosts of the enemy distress you, when your frame is fevered and your passions roused, when you say in your heart, “What shall I do?” Elisha’s words shall give you your answer, “Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.”353 He shall pray, “Lord, open the eyes of thine handmaid that she may see.” And then when your eyes have been opened you shall see a fiery chariot like Elijah’s waiting to carry you to heaven, and shall joyfully sing: “Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken and we are escaped.”355 4. So long as we are held down by this frail body, so long as we have our treasure in earthen vessels; so long as the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, there can be no sure victory. “Our adversary the devil goeth about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.”358 “Thou makest darkness,” David says, “and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey and seek their meat from God.”359 The devil looks not for unbelievers, for those who are without, whose flesh the Assyrian king roasted in the furnace. It is the church of Christ that he “makes haste to spoil.”361 According to Habakkuk, “His food is of the choicest.”362 A Job is the victim of his machinations, and after devouring Judas he 353 359 Isa. xxxiv. 5, R.V. Gen. iii. 14, 18. Eph. vi. 12, R.V. Joh. xiv. 30. The variant is difficult to explain and may be only a slip. Ps. xci. 5–7, Vulg. 2 Kings ii. 11; vi. 17. Ps. cxxiv. 7. Gal. v. 17. Ps. civ. 20, 21. Jer. xxix. 22. An allusion to “Maher-shalal-hash-baz,” Isa. viii. 1. Hab. i. 16, LXX. St. Jerome seeks power to sift the [other] apostles. The Saviour came not to send peace upon the earth but a sword. Lucifer fell, Lucifer who used to rise at dawn; and he who was bred up in a paradise of delight had the well-earned sentence passed upon him, “Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.”366 For he had said in his heart, “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God,” and “I will be like the Most High.”367 Wherefore God says every day to the angels, as they descend the ladder that Jacob saw in his dream, “I have said ye are Gods and all of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.”369 The devil fell first, and since “God standeth in the congregation of the Gods and judgeth among the Gods,”370 the apostle writes to those who are ceasing to be Gods—“Whereas there is among you envying and strife, are ye not carnal and walk as men?”371 5. If, then, the apostle, who was a chosen vessel separated unto the gospel of Christ, by reason of the pricks of the flesh and the allurements of vice keeps under his body and brings it into subjection, lest when he has preached to others he may himself be a castaway; and yet, for all that, sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin; if after nakedness, fasting, hunger, imprisonment, scourging and other torments, he turns back to himself and cries “Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”376 do you fancy that you ought to lay aside apprehension? See to it that God say not some day of you: “The virgin of Israel is fallen and there is none to raise her up.”377 I will say it boldly, though God can do all things He cannot raise up a virgin when once she has fallen. He may indeed relieve one who is defiled from the penalty of her sin, but He will not give her a crown. Let us fear lest in us also the prophecy be fulfilled, “Good virgins shall faint.”378 Notice that it is good virgins who are spoken of, for there are bad ones as well. “Whosoever looketh on a woman,” the Lord says, “to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”379 So that virginity may be lost even by a thought. Such are evil virgins, virgins in the flesh, not in the spirit; foolish virgins, who, having no oil, are shut out by the Bridegroom. 6. But if even real virgins, when they have other failings, are not saved by their physical virginity, what shall become of those who have prostituted the members of Christ, and have changed the temple of the Holy Ghost into a brothel? Straightway shall they hear the words: “Come down and 368 374 Luke xxii. 31. Matt. x. 34. Isa. xiv. 12. Obad. 4. Isa. xiv. 13, 14. Gen. xxviii. 12. Ps. lxxxii. 6, 7. Ps. lxxxii. 1. Acts ix. 15. Gal. i. 15. Rom. vii. 23. Rom. vii. 24. Am. v. 2. Am. viii. 13. Matt. v. 28. Matt. xxv. 3, 10. St. Jerome sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground; there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldæans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. Take the millstone and grind meal; uncover thy locks, make bare the legs, pass over the rivers; thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen.”381 And shall she come to this after the bridal-chamber of God the Son, after the kisses of Him who is to her both kinsman and spouse? Yes, she of whom the prophetic utterance once sang, “Upon thy right hand did stand the queen in a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colours,”383 shall be made naked, and her skirts shall be discovered upon her face. She shall sit by the waters of loneliness, her pitcher laid aside; and shall open her feet to every one that passeth by, and shall be polluted to the crown of her head. Better had it been for her to have submitted to the yoke of marriage, to have walked in level places, than thus, aspiring to loftier heights, to fall into the deep of hell. I pray you, let not Zion the faithful city become a harlot: let it not be that where the Trinity has been entertained, there demons shall dance and owls make their nests, and jackals build. Let us not loose the belt that binds the breast. When lust tickles the sense and the soft fire of sensual pleasure sheds over us its pleasing glow, let us immediately break forth and cry: “The Lord is on my side: I will not fear what the flesh can do unto me.”388 When the inner man shows signs for a time of wavering between vice and virtue, say: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance and my God.”389 You must never let suggestions of evil grow on you, or a babel of disorder win strength in your breast. Slay the enemy while he is small; and, that you may not have a crop of tares, nip the evil in the bud. Bear in mind the warning words of the Psalmist: “Hapless daughter of Babylon, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”390 Because natural heat inevitably kindles in a man sensual passion, he is praised and accounted happy who, when foul suggestions arise in his mind, gives them no quarter, but dashes them instantly against the rock. “Now the Rock is Christ.”391 7. How often, when I was living in the desert, in the vast solitude which gives to hermits a savage dwelling-place, parched by a burning sun, how often did I fancy myself among the pleasures of Rome! I used to sit alone because I was filled with bitterness. Sackcloth disfigured my unshapely limbs and my skin from long neglect had become as black as an Ethiopian’s. Tears and groans were every day my portion; and if drowsiness chanced to overcome my struggles against it, my bare bones, which hardly held together, clashed against the ground. Of my food and drink I say nothing: for, even in sickness, the solitaries have nothing but cold water, and to eat one’s food cooked is looked upon as self-indulgence. Now, although in my fear of hell I had consigned myself to this prison, where I had no companions but scorpions and wild beasts, I often found myself amid bevies 387 Cant. v. 2, LXX. Ps. xlv. 10, P.B.V. Jer. xiii. 26. Ezek. xvi. 25. Isa. i. 21. Isa. xxxiv. 15; xiii. 22, R.V. Psa. cxviii. 6; lvi. 4. Ps. xlii. 11. Ps. cxxxvii. 9. of girls. My face was pale and my frame chilled with fasting; yet my mind was burning with desire, and the fires of lust kept bubbling up before me when my flesh was as good as dead. Helpless, I cast myself at the feet of Jesus, I watered them with my tears, I wiped them with my hair: and then I subdued my rebellious body with weeks of abstinence. I do not blush to avow my abject misery; rather I lament that I am not now what once I was. I remember how I often cried aloud all night till the break of day and ceased not from beating my breast till tranquillity returned at the chiding of the Lord. I used to dread my very cell as though it knew my thoughts; and, stern and angry with myself, I used to make my way alone into the desert. Wherever I saw hollow valleys, craggy mountains, steep cliffs, there I made my oratory, there the house of correction for my unhappy flesh. There, also—the Lord Himself is my witness—when I had shed copious tears and had strained my eyes towards heaven, I sometimes felt myself among angelic hosts, and for joy and gladness sang: “because of the savour of thy good ointments we will run after thee.”392 8. Now, if such are the temptations of men who, since their bodies are emaciated with fasting, have only evil thoughts to fear, how must it fare with a girl whose surroundings are those of luxury and ease? Surely, to use the apostle’s words, “She is dead while she liveth.”393 Therefore, if experience gives me a right to advise, or clothes my words with credit, I would begin by urging you and warning you as Christ’s spouse to avoid wine as you would avoid poison. For wine is the first weapon used by demons against the young. Greed does not shake, nor pride puff up, nor ambition infatuate so much as this. Other vices we easily escape, but this enemy is shut up within us, and wherever we go we carry him with us. Wine and youth between them kindle the fire of sensual pleasure. Why do we throw oil on the flame—why do we add fresh fuel to a miserable body which is already ablaze. Paul, it is true, says to Timothy “drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake, and for thine often infirmities.”394 But notice the reasons for which the permission is given, to cure an aching stomach and a frequent infirmity. And lest we should indulge ourselves too much on the score of our ailments, he commands that but little shall be taken; advising rather as a physician than as an apostle (though, indeed, an apostle is a spiritual physician). He evidently feared that Timothy might succumb to weakness, and might prove unequal to the constant moving to and fro involved in preaching the Gospel. Besides, he remembered that he had spoken of “wine wherein is excess,”395 and had said, “it is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine.”396 Noah drank wine and became intoxicated; but living as he did in the rude age after the flood, when the vine was first planted, perhaps he did not know its power of inebriation. And to let you see the hidden meaning of Scripture in all its fulness (for the word of God is a pearl and may be pierced on every side) after his drunkenness came the uncovering of his body; self-indulgence culminated in lust. First the belly is crammed; then the other members are roused. Similarly, at a later period, “The people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play.”398 Lot also, God’s friend, whom He saved upon the mountain, who was the only one found righteous out of so many thousands, was intoxicated by his daughters. And, although they may have acted as they did more Cant. i. 3, 4. 1 Tim. v. 23. Eph. v. 18. Rom. xiv. 21. Gen. ix. 20, 21. Ex. xxxii. 6. St. Jerome from a desire of offspring than from love of sinful pleasure—for the human race seemed in danger of extinction—yet they were well aware that the righteous man would not abet their design unless intoxicated. In fact he did not know what he was doing, and his sin was not wilful. Still his error was a grave one, for it made him the father of Moab and Ammon, Israel’s enemies, of whom it is said: “Even to the fourteenth generation they shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord forever.”400 9. When Elijah, in his flight from Jezebel, lay weary and desolate beneath the oak, there came an angel who raised him up and said, “Arise and eat.” And he looked, and behold there was a cake and a cruse of water at his head. Had God willed it, might He not have sent His prophet spiced wines and dainty dishes and flesh basted into tenderness? When Elisha invited the sons of the prophets to dinner, he only gave them field-herbs to eat; and when all cried out with one voice: “There is death in the pot,” the man of God did not storm at the cooks (for he was not used to very sumptuous fare), but caused meal to be brought, and casting it in, sweetened the bitter mess with spiritual strength as Moses had once sweetened the waters of Mara. Again, when men were sent to arrest the prophet, and were smitten with physical and mental blindness, that he might bring them without their own knowledge to Samaria, notice the food with which Elisha ordered them to be refreshed. “Set bread and water,” he said, “before them, that they may eat and drink and go to their master.”404 And Daniel, who might have had rich food from the king’s table, preferred the mower’s breakfast, brought to him by Habakkuk, which must have been but country fare. He was called “a man of desires,”407 because he would not eat the bread of desire or drink the wine of concupiscence. 10. There are, in the Scriptures, countless divine answers condemning gluttony and approving simple food. But as fasting is not my present theme and an adequate discussion of it would require a treatise to itself, these few observations must suffice of the many which the subject suggests. By them you will understand why the first man, obeying his belly and not God, was cast down from paradise into this vale of tears; and why Satan used hunger to tempt the Lord Himself in the wilderness; and why the apostle cries: “Meats for the belly and the belly for meats, but God shall destroy both it and them;”410 and why he speaks of the self-indulgent as men “whose God is their belly.”411 For men invariably worship what they like best. Care must be taken, therefore, that abstinence may bring back to Paradise those whom satiety once drove out. 11. You will tell me, perhaps, that, high-born as you are, reared in luxury and used to lie softly, you cannot do without wine and dainties, and would find a stricter rule of life unendurable. If so, I can only say: “Live, then, by your own rule, since God’s rule is too hard for you.” Not that the 404 410 Gen. xix. 30–38. Deut. xxiii. 3: Jerome substitutes “fourteenth” for “tenth.” 2 Kings iv. 38–41. Exod. xv. 23–25. Dan. i. 8. Bel. 33–39. Dan. ix. 23, A.V. marg. Ps. lxxxiv. 6, R.V. Matt. iv. 2, 3. Phil. iii. 19. St. Jerome Creator and Lord of all takes pleasure in a rumbling and empty stomach, or in fevered lungs; but that these are indispensable as means to the preservation of chastity. Job was dear to God, perfect and upright before Him; yet hear what he says of the devil: “His strength is in the loins, and his force is in the navel.”413 The terms are chosen for decency’s sake, but the reproductive organs of the two sexes are meant. Thus, the descendant of David, who, according to the promise is to sit upon his throne, is said to come from his loins. And the seventy-five souls descended from Jacob who entered Egypt are said to come out of his thigh. So, also, when his thigh shrank after the Lord had wrestled with him, he ceased to beget children. The Israelites, again, are told to celebrate the passover with loins girded and mortified. God says to Job: “Gird up thy loins as a man.”418 John wears a leathern girdle. The apostles must gird their loins to carry the lamps of the Gospel. When Ezekiel tells us how Jerusalem is found in the plain of wandering, covered with blood, he uses the words: “Thy navel has not been cut.”421 In his assaults on men, therefore, the devil’s strength is in the loins; in his attacks on women his force is in the navel. 12. Do you wish for proof of my assertions? Take examples. Sampson was braver than a lion and tougher than a rock; alone and unprotected he pursued a thousand armed men; and yet, in Delilah’s embrace, his resolution melted away. David was a man after God’s own heart, and his lips had often sung of the Holy One, the future Christ; and yet as he walked upon his housetop he was fascinated by Bathsheba’s nudity, and added murder to adultery. Notice here how, even in his own house, a man cannot use his eyes without danger. Then repenting, he says to the Lord: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight.”423 Being a king he feared no one else. So, too, with Solomon. Wisdom used him to sing her praise, and he treated of all plants “from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall;”425 and yet he went back from God because he was a lover of women. And, as if to show that near relationship is no safeguard, Amnon burned with illicit passion for his sister Tamar. 13. I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the church, their mother: stars over which the proud foe sets up his throne, and rocks hollowed by the serpent that he may dwell in their fissures. You may see many women widows before wedded, who try to conceal their miserable fall by a lying garb. Unless they are betrayed by swelling wombs or by the crying of their infants, they walk abroad with tripping feet and heads in the air. Some go 417 423 Job ii. 3. Job xl. 16, of behemoth. Ps. cxxxii. 11. Gen. xlvi. 26. Gen. xxxii. 24, 25. Exod. xii. 11. Job xxxviii. 3. Matt. iii. 4. Luke xii. 35. Ezek. xvi. 4–6. Ps. li. 4. Solomon was the reputed author of the Book of Wisdom. 1 Kings xi. 1–4. Isa. xiv. 13. so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often happens) they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder. Yet it is these who say: “‘Unto the pure all things are pure;’429 my conscience is sufficient guide for me. A pure heart is what God looks for. Why should I abstain from meats which God has created to be received with thanksgiving?”430 And when they wish to appear agreeable and entertaining they first drench themselves with wine, and then joining the grossest profanity to intoxication, they say “Far be it from me to abstain from the blood of Christ.” And when they see another pale or sad they call her “wretch” or “manichæan;”431 quite logically, indeed, for on their principles fasting involves heresy. When they go out they do their best to attract notice, and with nods and winks encourage troops of young fellows to follow them. Of each and all of these the prophet’s words are true: “Thou hast a whore’s forehead; thou refusest to be ashamed.”432 Their robes have but a narrow purple stripe, it is true; and their head-dress is somewhat loose, so as to leave the hair free. From their shoulders flutters the lilac mantle which they call “ma-forte;” they have their feet in cheap slippers and their arms tucked up tight-fitting sleeves. Add to these marks of their profession an easy gait, and you have all the virginity that they possess. Such may have eulogizers of their own, and may fetch a higher price in the market of perdition, merely because they are called virgins. But to such virgins as these I prefer to be displeasing. 14. I blush to speak of it, it is so shocking; yet though sad, it is true. How comes this plague of the agapetæ434 to be in the church? Whence come these unwedded wives, these novel concubines, these harlots, so I will call them, though they cling to a single partner? One house holds them and one chamber. They often occupy the same bed, and yet they call us suspicious if we fancy anything amiss. A brother leaves his virgin sister; a virgin, slighting her unmarried brother, seeks a brother in a stranger. Both alike profess to have but one object, to find spiritual consolation from those not of their kin; but their real aim is to indulge in sexual intercourse. It is on such that Solomon in the book of proverbs heaps his scorn. “Can a man take fire in his bosom,” he says, “and his clothes not be burned? Can one go upon hot coals and his feet not be burned?”435 15. We cast out, then, and banish from our sight those who only wish to seem and not to be virgins. Henceforward I may bring all my speech to bear upon you who, as it is your lot to be the first virgin of noble birth in Rome, have to labor the more diligently not to lose good things to come, as well as those that are present. You have at least learned from a case in your own family the troubles of wedded life and the uncertainties of marriage. Your sister, Blæsilla, before you in age but behind you in declining the vow of virginity, has become a widow but seven months after she has taken a husband. Hapless plight of us mortals who know not what is before us! She has lost, at once, the crown of virginity and the pleasures of wedlock. And, although, as a widow, the Tit. i. 15. The Manichæans believed evil to be inseparable from matter. Hence they inculcated a rigid asceticism. Jer. iii. 3. Plebeians wore a narrow stripe, patricians a broad one. Beloved ones, viz., women who lived with the unmarried clergy professedly as spiritual sisters, but really (in too many cases) as mistresses. The evil custom was widely prevalent and called forth many protests. The councils of Elvira, Ancyra, and Nicæa passed canons against it. Prov. vi. 27, 28. St.

Ep. XXV–XXVII — Letter XXV. To Marcella.

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, containing a few remarks on some Hebrew words, a report suddenly reached me that certain contemptible creatures were deliberately assailing me with the charge that I had endeavored to correct passages in the gospels, against the authority of the ancients and the opinion of the whole world. Now, though I might—as far as strict right goes—treat these persons with contempt (it is idle to play the lyre for an ass709), yet, lest they should follow their usual habit and reproach me with superciliousness, let them take my answer as follows: I am not so dull-wilted nor so coarsely ignorant (qualities which they take for holiness, calling themselves the disciples of fishermen as if men were made holy by knowing nothing)—I am not, I repeat, so ignorant as to suppose that any of the Lord’s words is either in need of correction or is not divinely inspired; but the Latin manuscripts of the Scriptures are proved to be faulty by the variations which all of them exhibit, and my object has been to restore them to the form of the Greek original, from which my detractors do not deny that they have been translated. If they dislike water drawn from the clear spring, let them drink of the muddy streamlet, and when they come to read the Scriptures, let them lay aside the keen eye which they turn on woods frequented by game-birds and waters XXVI. ῞Ονω λύρα was a Greek proverb. Reading nec diligentiam instead of et. abounding in shellfish. Easily satisfied in this instance alone, let them, if they will, regard the words of Christ as rude sayings, albeit that over these so many great intellects have labored for so many ages rather to divine than to expound the meaning of each single word. Let them charge the great apostle with want of literary skill, although it is said of him that much learning made him mad. 2. I know that as you read these words you will knit your brows, and fear that my freedom of speech is sowing the seeds of fresh quarrels; and that, if you could, you would gladly put your finger on my mouth to prevent me from even speaking of things which others do not blush to do. But, I ask you, wherein have I used too great license? Have I ever embellished my dinner plates with engravings of idols? Have I ever, at a Christian banquet, set before the eyes of virgins the polluting spectacle of Satyrs embracing bacchanals? or have I ever assailed any one in too bitter terms? Have I ever complained of beggars turned millionaires? Have I ever censured heirs for the funerals which they have given to their benefactors? The one thing that I have unfortunately said has been that virgins ought to live more in the company of women than of men, and by this I have made the whole city look scandalized and caused every one to point at me the finger of scorn. “They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head,”714 and I am become “a proverb to them.”715 Do you suppose after this that I will now say anything rash? 3. But “when I set the wheel rolling I began to form a wine flagon; how comes it that a waterpot is the result?”716 Lest Horace laugh at me I come back to my two-legged asses, and din into their ears, not the music of the lute, but the blare of the trumpet. They may say if they will, “rejoicing in hope; serving the time,” but we will say “rejoicing in hope; serving the Lord.”718 They may see fit to receive an accusation against a presbyter unconditionally; but we will say in the words of Scripture, “Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. Them that sin rebuke before all.”720 They may choose to read, “It is a man’s saying, and worthy of all acceptation;” we are content to err with the Greeks, that is to say with the apostle himself, who spoke Greek. Our version, therefore, is, it is “a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation.”721 Lastly, let them take as much pleasure as they please in their Gallican “geldings;”722 we will be satisfied with the simple “ass” of Zechariah, loosed from its halter and made ready for the Saviour’s service, which received the Lord on its back, and so fulfilled Isaiah’s prediction: “Blessed is he that soweth beside all waters, where the ox and the ass tread under foot.”723 Acts xxvi. 24. Hæreditarias sepulturas. The reference is to Letter XXII. Ps. lxix. 4. Ps. lxix. 11. Hor. A. P. 21, 22. Perhaps an allusion to the Greek proverb, ῎ονος λύρας ἤκουσε καὶ σάλπιγγος ὗς. “The ass listened to the lyre, and the pig to the trumpet.” Rom. xii. 11, 12. The reading κυρίω “Lord” is probably correct. The R.V. says, “Some ancient authorities read the opportunity,” (καιρῷ). I.e. a “presbyter.” 1 Tim. i. 15. Jerome’s detractors suggested this word instead of the simpler “ass” in Zech. ix. 9 and Matt. xxi. 2–5. The phrase “Gallican geldings” appears to be a quotation from Plaut. Aul. iii. 5, 21. Isa. xxxii. 20, LXX.

Ep. XXVIII–XXX — Letter XXVIII. To Marcella.

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, to knock at the closed door, to receive the ‘three loaves’ of the Trinity, and, when the Lord goes before us, to walk upon the water of the world.”727 Written at Rome a.d. 384.

Ep. XXXI–XXXIII — Letter XXXI. To Eustochium.

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 Matt. vii. 7. Luke xi. 5–8. Matt. xiv. 25–33. sacrifice to God, you have shown skill in taking off their overmuch sweetness and making them pungent—if I may so say—with a dash of pepper. For nothing that is simply pleasurable or merely sweet can please God. Everything must have in it a sharp seasoning of truth. Christ’s passover must be eaten with bitter herbs. 2. It is true that a festival such as the birthday of Saint Peter should be seasoned with more gladness than usual; still our merriment must not forget the limit set by Scripture, and we must not stray too far from the boundary of our wrestling-ground. Your presents, indeed, remind me of the sacred volume, for in it Ezekiel decks Jerusalem with bracelets, Baruch receives letters from Jeremiah, and the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove at the baptism of Christ. But to give you, too, a sprinkling of pepper and to remind you of my former letter, I send you to-day this three-fold warning. Cease not to adorn yourself with good works—the true bracelets of a Christian woman. Rend not the letter written on your heart as the profane king cut with his penknife that delivered to him by Baruch. Let not Hosea say to you as to Ephraim, “Thou art like a silly dove.”738 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 himself. For it was he who first introduced the fruit at Rome after his conquest of Pontus and Armenia; and the cherry tree is so called because he brought it from Cerasus. Now as the Scriptures do not mention cherries, but do speak of a basket of figs, I will use these instead to point my moral. May you be made of fruits such as those which grow before God’s temple and of which He says, “Behold they are good, very good.”741 The Saviour likes nothing that is half and half, and, while he welcomes the hot and does not shun the cold, he tells us in the Apocalypse that he will spew the lukewarm out of his mouth. Wherefore we must be careful to celebrate our holy day not so much with abundance of food as with exultation of spirit. For it is altogether unreasonable to wish to honor a martyr by excess who himself, as you know, pleased God by fasting. When you take food always recollect that eating should be followed by reading, and also by prayer. And if, by taking this course, 734 740 Lev. ii. 11. Ex. xii. 8. I.e. the day of his martyrdom, his heavenly nativity. Ezek. xvi. 11. Jer. xxxvi.; Baruch vi. Matt. iii. 16. Letter XXII. 2 Cor. iii. 2. Jer. xxxvi. 23. Hos. vii. 11. Celebrated for his campaigns against Mithridates, and also as a prince of epicures. Jer. xxiv. 1–3. Jer. xxiv. 3. Rev. iii. 15, 16. you displease some, repeat to yourself the words of the Apostle: “If I yet pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ”743 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 of the Old Testament with the scrolls of the Hebrew, to see if from hatred to Christ the synagogue has changed the text; and—to speak frankly to a friend—I have found several variations which confirm our faith. After having exactly revised the prophets, Solomon, the psalter, and the books of Kings, I am now engaged on Exodus (called by the Jews, from its opening words, Eleh shemôth746), and when I have finished this I shall go on to Leviticus. Now you see why I can let no claim for a letter withdraw me from my work. However, as I do not wish my friend Currentius to run altogether in vain, I have tacked on to this little talk two letters which I am sending to your sister Paula, and to her dear child Eustochium. Read these, and if you find them instructive or pleasant, take what I have said to them as meant for you also. 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. Gal. i. 10. 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. I.e. all the sapiential books, viz. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom. Exod. i. 1, , A.V., “these are the names.” The name means runner. Hence the allusion to Gal. ii. 2. XXX., XXXI. 1. Antiquity marvels at Marcus Terentius Varro, because of the countless books which he wrote for Latin readers; and Greek writers are extravagant in their praise of their man of brass, because he has written more works than one of us could so much as copy. But since Latin ears would find a list of Greek writings tiresome, I shall confine myself to the Latin Varro. I shall try to show that we of to-day are sleeping the sleep of Epimenides, and devoting to the amassing of riches the energy which our predecessors gave to sound, if secular, learning. 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 adamant752—Origen, I mean—whose zeal for the study of Scripture has fairly earned for him this latter name. Would you learn what monuments of his genius he has left us? The following list exhibits them. His writings comprise thirteen books on Genesis, two books of Mystical Homilies, notes on Exodus, notes on Leviticus, * * * * also single books, four books on First Principles, two books on the Resurrection, two dialogues on the same subject. *********** 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, only the bishops of Palestine, Arabia, Phenicia, and Achaia dissenting. Imperial Rome consents to his condemnation, and even convenes a senate to censure him, not—as the rabid hounds who now pursue him cry—because of the novelty or heterodoxy of his doctrines, but because men could not tolerate the incomparable eloquence and knowledge which, when once he opened his lips, made others seem dumb. 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. Of the 490 books composed by this voluminous writer only two are extant, a treatise on husbandry and an essay on the Latin language. The epithet χαλκέντερος , “heart of brass,” is applied by Suidas to the grammarian Didymus, who, according to Athenæus, wrote 3, books. Of these not one is extant. Which lasted 57 years. ᾽Αδαμάντιος —Origen is so called by Eusebius (H. E. vi. 14, 10). It appears to have been his proper name. “They may have been detached essays on particular subjects.”—Westcott. All the works mentioned have perished except the treatise on First Principles, and this in its completeness is extant only in the Latin version of Rufinus. The version made by Jerome has perished. 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. For Origen’s condemnation in a synod held at Rome this passage is the principal authority. It is more than doubtful whether such a synod ever met; if it did it must have been when Pontianus was pope, in 231 or 232 a.d. Jerome may only mean that the great men of Rome all agreed in this condemnation. 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.”

Ep. XXXIV–XXXVI — Letter XXXIV. To Marcella.

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.

Ep. XXXVII–XXXIX — Letter XXXVII. To Marcella.

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. When Joseph is sold into Egypt, his sojourn there enables him to support his father and his brothers. When Hezekiah is panic-stricken at the near approach of death, his tears and prayers obtain for him a respite of fifteen years. If the faith of the apostle, Peter, is shaken by his Lord’s passion, it is that, weeping bitterly, he may hear the soothing words: “Feed my sheep.”761 If Paul, that ravening Gen. xxxvii., xlvi. Luke xxii. 54–62; Joh. xxi. 16. St. Jerome wolf, that little Benjamin, is blinded in a trance, it is that he may receive his sight, and may be led, by the sudden horror of surrounding darkness, to call Him Lord Whom before he persecuted as man. 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. Formerly her life savored somewhat of carelessness; and, fast bound in the bands of wealth, she lay as one dead in the tomb of the world. But Jesus was moved with indignation, and was troubled in spirit, and cried aloud and said, Blæsilla, come forth. She, at His call, has arisen and has come forth, and sits at meat with the Lord. The Jews, if they will, may threaten her in their wrath; they may seek to slay her, because Christ has raised her up. It is enough that the apostles give God the glory. Blæsilla knows that her life is due to Him who has given it back to her. She knows that now she can clasp the feet of Him whom but a little while ago she dreaded as her judge. Then life had all but forsaken her body, and the approach of death made her gasp and shiver. What succour did she obtain in that hour from her kinsfolk? What comfort was there in their words lighter than smoke? She owes no debt to you, ye unkindly kindred, now that she is dead to the world and alive unto Christ. The Christian must rejoice that it is so, and he that is vexed must admit that he has no claim to be called a Christian. 3. A widow who is “loosed from the law of her husband”772 has, for her one duty, to continue a widow. But, you will say, a sombre dress vexes the world. In that case, John the Baptist would vex it, too; and yet, among those that are born of women, there has not been a greater than he. He was called an angel; he baptized the Lord Himself, and yet he was clothed in raiment of camel’s hair, and girded with a leathern girdle. Is the world displeased because a widow’s food is coarse? Nothing can be coarser than locusts, and yet these were the food of John. The women who ought to scandalize Christians are those who paint their eyes and lips with rouge and cosmetics; whose chalked faces, unnaturally white, are like those of idols; upon whose cheeks every chance tear leaves a furrow; who fail to realize that years make them old; who heap their heads with hair not their own; who smooth their faces, and rub out the wrinkles of age; and who, in the presence of their grandsons, behave like trembling school-girls. A Christian woman should blush to do 768 774 Gen. xlix. 27. Ps. lxviii. 27. Acts ix. 3–18. Cf. Mark i. 30, 31. John xi. 38, R.V. marg. Joh. xi. 38–44. Joh. xii. 2. Joh. xii. 10. Luke vii. 38. Rom. vi. 11. Rom. vii. 2. Luke vii. 28. Luke vii. 27. The word “angel” means “messenger.” Matt. iii. 4. St. Jerome violence to nature, or to stimulate desire by bestowing care upon the flesh. “They that are in the flesh,” the apostle tells us, “cannot please God.”776 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.”777 In those days maids arranged her hair, and her head, which had done no harm, was forced into a waving head-dress. Now she leaves her hair alone, and her only head-dress is a veil. In those days the softest feather-bed seemed hard to her, and she could scarcely find rest on a pile of mattresses. Now she rises eager for prayer, her shrill voice cries Alleluia before every other, she is the first to praise her Lord. She kneels upon the bare ground, and with frequent tears cleanses a face once defiled with white lead. After prayer comes the singing of psalms, and it is only when her neck aches and her knees totter, and her eyes begin to close with weariness, that she gives them leave reluctantly to rest. As her dress is dark, lying on the ground does not soil it. Cheap shoes permit her to give to the poor the price of gilded ones. No gold and jewels adorn her girdle; it is made of wool, plain and scrupulously clean. It is intended to keep her clothes right, and not to cut her waist in two. Therefore, if the scorpion looks askance upon her purpose, and with alluring words tempts her once more to eat of the forbidden tree, she must crush him beneath her feet with a curse, and say, as he lies dying in his allotted dust: “Get thee behind me, Satan.”779 Satan means adversary, and one who dislikes Christ’s commandments, is more than Christ’s adversary; he is anti-christ. 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. The publican stood up from the receipt of custom and followed the Saviour once for all. And when a disciple wished to return home, that he might take leave of his kinsfolk, the Master’s voice refused consent. A son was even forbidden to bury his father, as if to show that it is sometimes a religious duty to be undutiful for the Lord’s sake. With us it is different. We are held to be monks if we refuse to dress in silk. We are called sour and severe if we keep sober and refrain from excessive laughter. The mob salutes us as Greeks and impostors if our tunics are fresh and clean. They may deal in still severer witticisms if they please; they may parade every fat paunch they can lay hold of, to turn us into ridicule. Our Blæsilla will laugh at their efforts, and will bear with patience the taunts of all such croaking frogs, for she will remember that men called her Lord, Beelzebub. 782 Rom. viii. 8. Gen. iii. 14. Matt. xvi. 23. Matt. iv. 18–22. Matt. ix. 9. Luke ix. 61, 62. Matt. viii. 21. Luke xiv. 26. Cf. Letter LIV. § 5. Pinguis aqualiculus—Pers. i. 57. Matt. x. 25. 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,”789 nor as Jesus, for the miserable fate of Jerusalem, but for holiness, mercy, innocence, chastity, and all the virtues, for all are gone now that Blæsilla is dead. For her sake I do not grieve, but for myself I must; my loss is too great to be borne with resignation. Who can recall with dry eyes the glowing faith which induced a girl of twenty to raise the standard of the Cross, and to mourn the loss of her virginity more than the death of her husband? Who can recall without a sigh the earnestness of her prayers, the brilliancy of her conversation, the tenacity of her memory, and the quickness of her intellect? Had you heard her speak Greek you would have deemed her ignorant of Latin; yet when she used the tongue of Rome her words were free from a foreign accent. She even rivalled the great Origen in those acquirements which won for him the admiration of Greece. For in a few months, or rather days, she so completely mastered the difficulties of Hebrew as to emulate her mother’s zeal in learning and singing the psalms. Her attire was plain, but this plainness was not, as it often is, a mark of pride. Indeed, her self-abasement was so perfect that she dressed no better than her maids, and was only distinguished from them by the greater ease of her walk. Her steps tottered with weakness, her face was pale and quivering, her slender neck scarcely upheld her head. Still she always had in her hand a prophet or a gospel. As I think of her my eyes fill with tears, sobs impede my voice, and such is my emotion that my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. As she lay there dying, her poor frame parched with burning fever, and her relatives gathered round her bed, her last words were: “Pray to the Lord Jesus, that He may pardon me, because what I would have done I have not been able to do.” Be at peace, dear Blæsilla, in full assurance that your garments are always white. For yours is the purity of an everlasting virginity. I feel confident that my words are true: conversion can never be too late. The words to the dying robber are a pledge of this: “Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”792 When at last her spirit was delivered from the burden of the flesh, and had returned to Him who gave it; when, too, after her long pilgrimage, she had ascended up into her ancient heritage, her obsequies were celebrated with customary splendor. People of rank headed the procession, a pall made of cloth of gold covered her bier. But I seemed to hear a voice from heaven, saying: “I do not recognize these trappings; such is not the garb I used to wear; this magnificence is strange to me.” Luke xix. 41. Eccles. ix. 8. Luke xxiii. 43. Cf. Eccles. xii. 7. St. Jerome 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. But he is a poor comforter who is overcome by his own sighs, and from whose afflicted heart tears are wrung as well as words. Dear Paula, my agony is as great as yours. Jesus knows it, whom Blæsilla now follows; the holy angels know it, whose company she now enjoys. I was her father in the spirit, her foster-father in affection. Sometimes I say: “Let the day perish wherein I was born,”795 and again, “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth.”796 I cry: “Righteous art thou, O Lord…yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments. Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?”797 and “as for me, my feet were almost gone, my steps had well-nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, and I said: How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most high? Behold these are the ungodly who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.”798 But again I recall other words, “If I say I will speak thus, behold I should offend against the generation of thy children.”799 Do not great waves of doubt surge up over my soul as over yours? How comes it, I ask, that godless men live to old age in the enjoyment of this world’s riches? How comes it that untutored youth and innocent childhood are cut down while still in the bud? Why is it that children three years old or two, and even unweaned infants, are possessed with devils, covered with leprosy, and eaten up with jaundice, while godless men and profane, adulterers and murderers, have health and strength to blaspheme God? Are we not told that the unrighteousness of the father does not fall upon the son, and that “the soul that sinneth it shall die?”801 Or if the old doctrine holds good that the sins of the fathers must be visited upon the children, an old man’s countless sins cannot fairly be avenged upon a harmless infant. And I have said: “Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. For all the day long have I been plagued.”803 Yet when I have thought of these things, like the prophet I have learned to say: “When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.”804 Truly the judgments of the Lord are a great deep. “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!”806 God is good, and all that He does must be good also. Does He decree that I must lose my husband? I mourn my loss, but because it is His will I bear it with resignation. Is an only son snatched from me? The blow is hard, yet it can be borne, for He who has taken away is He who gave. If I become blind a friend’s reading will console me. If I become deaf I shall escape from sinful words, and my thoughts shall be of God alone. And if, besides such trials as these, poverty, cold, sickness, and 799 805 John xi. 35, 36. Job iii. 3: cf. Jer. xx. 14. Jer. xv. 10. Jer. xii. 1. Ps. lxxiii. 2, 3, 11, 12, Vulg. Ps. lxxiii. 15. Ezek. xviii. 20. Ezek. xviii. 4. Ex. xx. 5. Ps. lxxiii. 13, 14. Ps. lxxiii. 16, 17. Ps. xxxvi. 6. Rom. xi. 33. Job i. 21. St. Jerome nakedness oppress me, I shall wait for death, and regard them as passing evils, soon to give way to a better issue. Let us reflect on the words of the sapiential psalm: “Righteous art thou, O Lord, and upright are thy judgments.”808 Only he can speak thus who in all his troubles magnifies the Lord, and, putting down his sufferings to his sins, thanks God for his clemency. The daughters of Judah, we are told, rejoiced, because of all the judgments of the Lord. Therefore, since Judah means confession, and since every believing soul confesses its faith, he who claims to believe in Christ must rejoice in all Christ’s judgments. Am I in health? I thank my Creator. Am I sick? In this case, too, I praise God’s will. For “when I am weak, then am I strong;” and the strength of the spirit is made perfect in the weakness of the flesh. Even an apostle must bear what he dislikes, that ailment for the removal of which he besought the Lord thrice. God’s reply was: “My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”811 Lest he should be unduly elated by his revelations, a reminder of his human weakness was given to him, just as in the triumphal car of the victorious general there was always a slave to whisper constantly, amid the cheerings of the multitude, “Remember that thou art but man.”812 3. But why should that be hard to bear which we must one day ourselves endure? And why do we grieve for the dead? We are not born to live forever. Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah, Peter, James, and John, Paul, the “chosen vessel,”813 and even the Son of God Himself have all died; and are we vexed when a soul leaves its earthly tenement? Perhaps he is taken away, “lest that wickedness should alter his understanding…for his soul pleased the Lord: therefore hasted he to take him away from the people”814—lest in life’s long journey he should lose his way in some trackless maze. We should indeed mourn for the dead, but only for him whom Gehenna receives, whom Tartarus devours, and for whose punishment the eternal fire burns. But we who, in departing, are accompanied by an escort of angels, and met by Christ Himself, should rather grieve that we have to tarry yet longer in this tabernacle of death. For “whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.”816 Our one longing should be that expressed by the psalmist: “Woe is me that my pilgrimage is prolonged, that I have dwelt with them that dwell in Kedar, that my soul hath made a far pilgrimage.”817 Kedar means darkness, and darkness stands for this present world (for, we are told, “the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth it not”818). Therefore we should congratulate our dear Blæsilla that she has passed from darkness to light, and has in the first flush of her dawning faith received the crown of her completed work. Had she been cut off (as I pray that none may be) while her thoughts were full of worldly desires and passing pleasures, then mourning would indeed have been her due, and no tears shed for her would have been too many. As it is, by the mercy of Christ she, four months ago, renewed her baptism in her vow of widowhood, 814 Ps. cxix. 137. Ps. xcvii. 8. Rom. x. 10. Cf. Tertullian, Apol. 33. Acts ix. 15. Wisd. iv. 11, 14. 2 Cor. v. 6. Ps. cxx. 5, 6, Vulg. Joh. i. 5. Eph. v. 8. and for the rest of her days spurned the world, and thought only of the religious life. Have you no fear, then, lest the Saviour may say to you: “Are you angry, Paula, that your daughter has become my daughter? Are you vexed at my decree, and do you, with rebellious tears, grudge me the possession of Blæsilla? You ought to know what my purpose is both for you and for yours. You deny yourself food, not to fast but to gratify your grief; and such abstinence is displeasing to me. Such fasts are my enemies. I receive no soul which forsakes the body against my will. A foolish philosophy may boast of martyrs of this kind; it may boast of a Zeno a Cleombrotus, or a Cato. My spirit rests only upon him “that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word. Is this the meaning of your vow to me that you would lead a religious life? Is it for this that you dress yourself differently from other matrons, and array yourself in the garb of a nun? Mourning is for those who wear silk dresses. In the midst of your tears the call will come, and you, too, must die; yet you flee from me as from a cruel judge, and fancy that you can avoid falling into my hands. Jonah, that headstrong prophet, once fled from me, yet in the depths of the sea he was still mine. If you really believed your daughter to be alive, you would not grieve that she had passed to a better world. This is the commandment that I have given you through my apostle, that you sorrow not for them that sleep, even as the Gentiles, which have no hope. Blush, for you are put to shame by the example of a heathen. The devil’s handmaid is better than mine. For, while she imagines that her unbelieving husband has been translated to heaven, you either do not or will not believe that your daughter is at rest with me.” 4. Why should I not mourn, you say? Jacob put on sackcloth for Joseph, and when all his family gathered round him, refused to be comforted. “I will go down,” he said, “into the grave unto my son mourning.”827 David also mourned for Absalom, covering his face, and crying: “O my son, Absalom…my son, Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son!”828 Moses, too, and Aaron, and the rest of the saints were mourned for with a solemn mourning. The answer to your reasoning is simple. Jacob, it is true, mourned for Joseph, whom he fancied slain, and thought to meet only in the grave (his words were: “I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning”), but he only did so because Christ had not yet broken open the door of paradise, nor quenched with his blood the flaming sword and the whirling of the guardian cherubim. (Hence in the story of Dives and Lazarus, Abraham and the beggar, though really in a place of refreshment, are described as being in hell.832) And David, who, after interceding in vain for the life of his infant child, refused to weep for it, knowing that it had not sinned, did well to weep for a son who had A famous stoic who committed suicide in extreme old age. See Diogenes Laertius (vii. 1) for an account of his death. An academic philosopher of Ambracia, who is said to have killed himself after reading the Phædo of Plato. Cato of Utica, who, after the battle of Thapsus (46 b.c.), committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of Cæsar. Isa. lxvi. 2. Jon. ii. 2–7. Viz. Paulina, wife of Prætextatus and priestess of Ceres. See Letter XXIII. § 3. Gen. xxxvii. 35. Deut. xxxiv. 8. Nu. xx. 29. Gen. iii. 24: cf. Ezek. i. 15–20. Here as in his Comm. on Eccles. iii. 16–22, Jerome follows Origen, who, in his homily de Engastrimytho, lays down that until Christ came to set them free the patriarchs, prophets, and saints of the Old Testament were all in hell. Apud inferos—Luke xvi. 23. St. Jerome been a parricide—in will, if not in deed. And when we read that, for Moses and Aaron, lamentation was made after ancient custom, this ought not to surprise us, for even in the Acts of the Apostles, in the full blaze of the gospel, we see that the brethren at Jerusalem made great lamentation for Stephen. This great lamentation, however, refers not to the mourners, but to the funeral procession and to the crowds which accompanied it. This is what the Scripture says of Jacob: “Joseph went up to bury his father: and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph and his brethren”; and a few lines farther on: “And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a great company.” Finally, “they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation.”835 This solemn lamentation does not impose prolonged weeping upon the Egyptians, but simply describes the funeral ceremony. In like manner, when we read of weeping made for Moses and Aaron, this is all that is meant. I cannot adequately extol the mysteries of Scripture, nor sufficiently admire the spiritual meaning conveyed in its most simple words. We are told, for instance, that lamentation was made for Moses; yet when the funeral of Joshua is described no mention at all is made of weeping. The reason, of course, is that under Moses—that is under the old Law—all men were bound by the sentence passed on Adam’s sin, and when they descended into hell were rightly accompanied with tears. For, as the apostle says, “death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned.”839 But under Jesus, that is, under the Gospel of Christ, who has unlocked for us the gate of paradise, death is accompanied, not with sorrow, but with joy. The Jews go on weeping to this day; they make bare their feet, they crouch in sackcloth, they roll in ashes. And to make their superstition complete, they follow a foolish custom of the Pharisees, and eat lentils, to show, it would seem, for what poor fare they have lost their birthright. Of course they are right to weep, for as they do not believe in the Lord’s resurrection they are being made ready for the advent of antichrist. But we who have put on Christ and according to the apostle are a royal and priestly race, we ought not to grieve for the dead. “Moses,” the Scripture tells us, “said unto Aaron and unto Eleazar, and unto Ithamar, his sons that were left: Uncover not your heads, neither rend your clothes; lest ye die, and lest wrath come upon all the people.”845 Rend not your clothes, he says, neither mourn as pagans, lest you die. For, for us sin is death. In this same book, Leviticus, there is a provision which may perhaps strike some as cruel, yet is necessary to faith: the high priest is forbidden to approach the dead bodies of his father and mother, of his brothers and of his children; to the end, that no grief may distract a soul engaged in offering sacrifice to God, and wholly devoted to the Divine Acts viii. 2. Gen. 1. 7–10. Nu. xx. 29; Deut. xxxiv. 6–8. Josh. xxiv. 30. Ad inferos. Hades is meant, not Gehenna. Rom. v. 14. The Greek form of Joshua. Cf. Acts vii. 45, A.V. I learn from Dr. Neubauer, of Oxford, that this is still a practice during mourning among the Jews of the East. He refers to Tur Joreh Deah. §378. Gen. xxv. 34. Gal. iii. 27. Lev. x. 6, 12. Lev. xxi. 10–12. St. Jerome mysteries. Are we not taught the same lesson in the Gospel in other words? Is not the disciple forbidden to say farewell to his home or to bury his dead father? Of the high priest, again, it is said: “He shall not go out of the sanctuary, and the sanctification of his God shall not be contaminated, for the anointing oil of his God is upon him.”848 Certainly, now that we have believed in Christ, and bear Him within us, by reason of the oil of His anointing which we have received, we ought not to depart from His temple—that is, from our Christian profession—we ought not to go forth to mingle with the unbelieving Gentiles, but always to remain within, as servants obedient to the will of the Lord. 5. I have spoken plainly, lest you might ignorantly suppose that Scripture sanctions your grief; and that, if you err, you have reason on your side. And, so far, my words have been addressed to the average Christian woman. But now it will not be so. For in your case, as I well know, renunciation of the world has been complete; you have rejected and trampled on the delights of life, and you give yourself daily to fasting, to reading, and to prayer. Like Abraham, you desire to leave your country and kindred, to forsake Mesopotamia and the Chaldæans, to enter into the promised land. Dead to the world before your death, you have spent all your mere worldly substance upon the poor, or have bestowed it upon your children. I am the more surprised, therefore, that you should act in a manner which in others would justly call for reprehension. You call to mind Blæsilla’s companionship, her conversation, and her endearing ways; and you cannot endure the thought that you have lost them all.

Ep. XL–XLII — Letter XL. To Marcella.

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. Jeremiah is sent from Jerusalem to the Euphrates (a river in Mesopotamia), and leaves his girdle to be marred in the Chaldæan camp, among the Assyrians hostile to his people. Ezekiel is told to eat bread made of mingled seeds and sprinkled with the dung of men and cattle. He has to see his wife die Isa. xx. 2. Jer. xiii. 6, 7. Ezek. iv. 9–16. without shedding a tear. Amos is driven from Samaria. Why is he driven from it? Surely in this case as in the others, because he was a spiritual surgeon, who cut away the parts diseased by sin and urged men to repentance. The apostle Paul says: “Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?”863 And so the Saviour Himself found it, from whom many of the disciples went back because His sayings seemed hard. 2. It is not surprising, then, that by exposing their faults I have offended many. I have arranged to operate on a cancerous nose; let him who suffers from wens tremble. I wish to rebuke a chattering daw; let the crow realize that she is offensive. Yet, after all, is there but one person in Rome “Whose nostrils are disfigured by a scar?”867 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! Why it does not follow at all. A brake is called a brake just because the light does not break through it. The Fates are called “sparers,”870 just because they never spare. The Furies are spoken of as gracious, because they show no grace. And in common speech Ethiopians go by the name of silverlings. Still, if the showing up of faults always angers you, I will soothe you now with the words of Persius: “May you be a catch for my lord and lady’s daughter! May the pretty ladies scramble for you! May the ground you walk on turn to a rose-bed!”872 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. 867 Ezek. xxiv. 15–18. Amos vii. 12, 13. Gal. iv. 16. John vi. 60, 66. Nasus. A play on the name Onasus. Cf. Persius, l. 33. Virg. A. vi. 497. Onasus means “lucky” or “profitable;” it is another form of Onesimus. Quoted from Quintilian i. 6, 34 (lucus a non lucendo). Parcæ, from parcere, to spare. Eumenides, the Greek name for the Furies. Pers. ii. 37, 38. Letter XLI. To Marcella. An effort having been made to convert Marcella to Montanism, Jerome here summarizes for her its leading doctrines, which he contrasts with those of the Church. Written at Rome in 385 a.d. 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 Paraclete874—as regards these, the Acts of the Apostles inform us both for what time the promises were made, and at what time they were actually fulfilled. Ten days had elapsed, we are told, from the Lord’s ascension and fifty from His resurrection, when the Holy Spirit came down, and the tongues of the believers were cloven, so that each spoke every language. Then it was that, when certain persons of those who as yet believed not declared that the disciples were drunk with new wine, Peter standing in the midst of the apostles, and of all the concourse said: “Ye men of Judæa and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you and hearken to my words: for these are not drunken as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken of by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: and on my servants, and on my handmaidens I will pour out…of my spirit.”875 2. If, then, the apostle Peter, upon whom the Lord has founded the Church, has expressly said that the prophecy and promise of the Lord were then and there fulfilled, how can we claim another fulfilment for ourselves? if the Montanists reply that Philip’s four daughters prophesied at a later date, and that a prophet is mentioned named Agabus, and that in the partition of the spirit, prophets are spoken of as well as apostles, teachers and others, and that Paul himself prophesied many things concerning heresies still future, and the end of the world; we tell them that we do not so much reject prophecy—for this is attested by the passion of the Lord—as refuse to receive prophets whose utterances fail to accord with the Scriptures old and new. 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, force the Trinity into the narrow limits of a single personality. We, while we do not encourage them, yet allow second marriages, since Paul bids the younger widows to marry. They suppose a repetition of marriage a sin so awful that he 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. Joh. xiv. 28; xv. 26. Acts ii. 14–18. Matt. xvi. 18. Acts xxi. 9. Acts xi. 28; xxi. 10, 11. 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. St. Jerome who has committed it is to be regarded as an adulterer. We, according to the apostolic tradition (in which the whole world is at one with us), fast through one Lent yearly; whereas they keep three in the year as though three saviours had suffered. I do not mean, of course, that it is unlawful to fast at other times through the year—always excepting Pentecost882—only that while in Lent it is a duty of obligation, at other seasons it is a matter of choice. With us, again, the bishops occupy the place of the apostles, but with them a bishop ranks not first but third. For while they put first the patriarchs of Pepusa in Phrygia, and place next to these the ministers called stewards, the bishops are relegated to the third or almost the lowest rank. No doubt their object is to make their religion more pretentious by putting that last which we put first. Again they close the doors of the Church to almost every fault, whilst we read daily, “I desire the repentance of a sinner rather than his death,”885 and “Shall they fall and not arise, saith the Lord,”886 and once more “Return ye backsliding children and I will heal your backslidings.”887 Their strictness does not prevent them from themselves committing grave sins, far from it; but there is this difference between us and them, that, whereas they in their self-righteousness blush to confess their faults, we do penance for ours, and so more readily gain pardon for them. 4. I pass over their sacraments of sin, made up as they are said to be, of sucking children subjected to a triumphant martyrdom. I prefer, I say, not to credit these; accusations of blood-shedding may well be false. But I must confute the open blasphemy of men who say that God first determined in the Old Testament to save the world by Moses and the prophets, but that finding Himself unable to fulfil His purpose He took to Himself a body of the Virgin, and preaching under the form of the Son in Christ, underwent death for our salvation. Moreover that, when by these two steps He was unable to save the world, He last of all descended by the Holy Spirit upon Montanus and those demented women Prisca and Maximilia; and that thus the mutilated and emasculate Montanus possessed a fulness of knowledge such as was never claimed by Paul; for he was content to say, “We know in part, and we prophesy in part,” and again, “Now we see through a glass darkly.”891 These are statements which require no refutation. To expose the infidelity of the Montanists is to triumph over it. Nor is it necessary that in so short a letter as this I should overthrow the several absurdities which they bring forward. You are well acquainted with the Scriptures; and, as I take it, you have written, not because you have been disturbed by their cavils, but only to learn my opinion about them. 888 Called by the Montanists the New Jerusalem. Oeconomos—according to a probable emendation. The text has cenonas. Ezek. xviii. 23. Jer. viii. 4. Jer. iii. 22. Mysteria. Victuro martyre confarrata. The precise meaning of the words is obscure. Some suppose him to have been a priest of Cybele, but it would be a mistake to lay too much stress on Jerome’s words. 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 explanation of it to be untenable. Written at Rome in 385 a.d. 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.”893 Now if Novatian affirms that none but Christian renegades can sin against the Holy Ghost, it is plain that the Jews who blasphemed Christ were not guilty of this sin. Yet they were wicked husbandmen, they had slain the prophets, they were then compassing the death of the Lord; and so utterly lost were they that the Son of God told them that it was they whom he had come to save. It must be proved to Novatian, therefore, that the sin which shall never be forgiven is not the blasphemy of men disembowelled by torture who in their agony deny their Lord, but is the captious clamor of those who, while they see that God’s works are the fruit of virtue, ascribe the virtue to a demon and declare the signs wrought to belong not to the divine excellence but to the devil. And this is the whole gist of our Saviour’s argument, when He teaches that Satan cannot be cast out by Satan, and that his kingdom is not divided against itself. If it is the devil’s object to injure God’s creation, how can he wish to cure the sick and to expel himself from the bodies possessed by him? Let Novatian prove that of those who have been compelled to sacrifice before a judge’s tribunal any has declared of the things written in the gospel that they were wrought not by the Son of God but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils; and then he will be able to make good his contention that this is the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost which shall never be forgiven. 2. But to put a more searching question still: let Novatian tell us how he distinguishes speaking against the Son of Man from blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. For I maintain that on his principles men who have denied Christ under persecution have only spoken against the Son of Man, and have not blasphemed the Holy Ghost. For when a man is asked if he is a Christian, and declares that he is not; obviously in denying Christ, that is the Son of Man, he does no despite to the Holy Ghost. But if his denial of Christ involves a denial of the Holy Ghost, this heretic can perhaps tell us how the Son of Man can be denied without sinning against the Holy Ghost. If he thinks that we are here intended by the term Holy Ghost to understand the Father, no mention at all of the Father is made by the denier in his denial. When the apostle Peter, taken aback by a maid’s question, denied the Lord, did he sin against the Son of Man or against the Holy Ghost? If Novatian absurdly twists 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.” Matt. xii. 32. Matt. xxi. 33. Matt. xviii. 11. Matt. xii. 25, 26. Matt. xii. 24. Viz. denial of Christ by Christians. Peter’s words, “I know not the man,”899 to mean a denial not of Christ’s Messiahship but of His humanity, he will make the Saviour a liar, for He foretold that He Himself, that is His divine Sonship, must be denied. Now, when Peter denied the Son of God, he wept bitterly and effaced his threefold denial by a threefold confession. His sin, therefore, was not the sin against the Holy Ghost which can never be forgiven. It is obvious, then, that this sin involves blasphemy, calling one Beelzebub for his actions, whose virtues prove him to be God. If Novatian can bring an instance of a renegade who has called Christ Beelzebub, I will at once give up my position and admit that after such a fall the denier can win no forgiveness. To give way under torture and to deny oneself to be a Christian is one thing, to say that Christ is the devil is another. And this you will yourself see if you read the passage attentively. 3. I ought to have discussed the matter more fully, but some friends have visited my humble abode, and I cannot refuse to give myself up to them. Still, as it might seem arrogant not to answer you at once, I have compressed a wide subject into a few words, and have sent you not a letter but an explanatory note.

Ep. XLIII–XLV — Letter XLIII. To Marcella.

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, with money, materials and amanuenses to bring out his countless books—Ambrose, in a letter to his friend from Athens, states that they never took a meal together without something being read, and never went to bed till some portion of Scripture had been brought home to them by a brother’s voice. Night and day, in fact, were so ordered that prayer only gave place to reading and reading to prayer. 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 Matt. xxvi. 74. Matt. xxvi. 33–35; Joh. xiii. 38. Joh. xxi. 15–17. Viz. Matt. xii. 32, quoted above. Commentariolum. For the meaning of these epithets as applied to Origen see Letter XXXIII. § 1. St. Jerome 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?”905 The clothing which we buy is designed not merely for use but for display. Where there is a chance of saving money we quicken our pace, speak promptly, and keep our ears open. If we hear of household losses—such as often occur—our looks become dejected and gloomy. The gain of a penny fills us with joy; the loss of a half-penny plunges us into sorrow. One man is of so many minds that the prophet’s prayer is: “Lord, in thy city scatter their image.”908 For created as we are in the image of God and after His likeness, it is our own wickedness which makes us assume masks. Just as on the stage the same actor now figures as a brawny Hercules, now softens into a tender Venus, now shivers in the role of Cybele; so we—who, if we were not of the world, would be hated by the world911—for every sin that we commit have a corresponding mask. 3. Wherefore, seeing that we have journeyed for much of our life through a troubled sea, and that our vessel has been in turn shaken by raging blasts and shattered upon treacherous reefs, let us, as soon as may be, make for the haven of rural quietude. There such country dainties as milk and household bread, and greens watered by our own hands, will supply us with coarse but harmless fare. So living, sleep will not call us away from prayer, nor satiety from reading. In summer the shade of a tree will afford us privacy. In autumn the quality of the air and the leaves strewn under foot will invite us to stop and rest. In springtime the fields will be bright with flowers, and our psalms will sound the sweeter for the twittering of the birds. When winter comes with its frost and snow, I shall not have to buy fuel, and, whether I sleep or keep vigil, shall be warmer than in town. At least, so far as I know, I shall keep off the cold at less expense. Let Rome keep to itself its noise and bustle, let the cruel shows of the arena go on, let the crowd rave at the circus, let the playgoers revel in the theatres and—for I must not altogether pass over our Christian friends—let the House of Ladies hold its daily sittings. It is good for us to cleave to the Lord, and to put our hope in the Lord God, so that when we have exchanged our present poverty for the kingdom of heaven, we may be able to exclaim: “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.”914 Surely if we can find such blessedness in heaven we may well grieve to have sought after pleasures poor and passing here upon earth. Farewell. Letter XLIV. To Marcella. 911 Nummus. Sc. Sestertius = 4 cents = 2 pence. Obolus = 3 1–2 cents = 1 penny 3 farthings. Ps. lxxiii. 20, Vulg. Gen. i. 26. These were worn by both Greek and Roman actors. Joh. xv. 19. Ps. lxxiii. 28. Senatus Matronarum. Comp. Letter XXXIII. 4: “Rome calls together its senate to condemn him.” Ps. lxxiii. 25. 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. Each of us does what he or she can. You send us gifts, we send you back letters of thanks. And as we are virgins who have taken the veil, it is our duty to show that hidden meanings lurk under your nice presents. Sackcloth, then, is a token of prayer and fasting, the chairs remind us that a virgin should never stir abroad, and the wax tapers that we should look for the bridegroom’s coming with our lights burning. The cups also warn us to mortify the flesh and always to be ready for martyrdom. “How bright,” says the psalmist, “is the cup of the Lord, intoxicating them that drink it!”918 Moreover, when you offer to matrons little fly-flaps to brush away mosquitoes, it is a charming way of hinting that they should at once check voluptuous feelings, for “dying flies,” we are told, “spoil sweet ointment.”919 In such presents, then, as these, virgins can find a model, and matrons a pattern. To me, too, your gifts convey a lesson, although one of an opposite kind. For chairs suit idlers, sackcloth does for penitents, and cups are wanted for the thirsty. And I shall be glad to light your tapers, if only to banish the terrors of the night and the fears of an evil conscience. 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; and to speak evil of the righteous is a sin not easily pardoned. The day will surely come when you and I shall mourn for others; for not a few will be in the flames. 2. I am said to be an infamous turncoat, a slippery knave, one who lies and deceives others by Satanic arts. Which is the safer course, I should like to know, to invent or credit these charges against innocent persons, or to refuse to believe them, even of the guilty? Some kissed my hands, yet attacked me with the tongues of vipers; sympathy was on their lips, but malignant joy in their Cf. Col. ii. 5. Cf. Letter CXXX. § 2. Matt. xxv. 1. Ps. xxiii. 5, according to the Gallican psalter. Eccles. x. 1, Vulg. Rom. xiv. 4. hearts. The Lord saw them and had them in derision, reserving my poor self and them for judgment to come. One would attack my gait or my way of laughing; another would find something amiss in my looks; another would suspect the simplicity of my manner. Such is the company in which I have lived for almost three years. It often happened that I found myself surrounded with virgins, and to some of these I expounded the divine books as best I could. Our studies brought about constant intercourse, this soon ripened into intimacy, and this, in turn, produced mutual confidence. If they have ever seen anything in my conduct unbecoming a Christian let them say so. Have I taken any one’s money? Have I not disdained all gifts, whether small or great? Has the chink of any one’s coin been heard in my hand? Has my language been equivocal, or my eye wanton? No; my sex is my one crime, and even on this score I am not assailed, save when there is a talk of Paula going to Jerusalem. Very well, then. They believed my accuser when he lied; why do they not believe him when he retracts? He is the same man now that he was then, and yet he who before declared me guilty now confesses that I am innocent. Surely a man’s words under torture are more trustworthy than in moments of gayety, except, indeed, that people are prone to believe falsehoods designed to gratify their ears, or, worse still, stories which, till then uninvented, they have urged others to invent. 3. Before I became acquainted with the family of the saintly Paula, all Rome resounded with my praises. Almost every one concurred in judging me worthy of the episcopate. Damasus, of blessed memory, spoke no words but mine. Men called me holy, humble, eloquent. Did I ever cross the threshold of a light woman? Was I ever fascinated by silk dresses, or glowing gems, or rouged faces, or display of gold? Of all the ladies in Rome but one had power to subdue me, and that one was Paula. She mourned and fasted, she was squalid with dirt, her eyes were dim from weeping. For whole nights she would pray to the Lord for mercy, and often the rising sun found her still at her prayers. The psalms were her only songs, the Gospel her whole speech, continence her one indulgence, fasting the staple of her life. The only woman who took my fancy was one whom I had not so much as seen at table. But when I began to revere, respect, and venerate her as her conspicuous chastity deserved, all my former virtues forsook me on the spot. 4. Oh! envy, that dost begin by tearing thyself! Oh! cunning malignity of Satan, that dost always persecute things holy! Of all the ladies in Rome, the only ones that caused scandal were Paula and Melanium, who, despising their wealth and deserting their children, uplifted the cross of the Lord as a standard of religion. Had they frequented the baths, or chosen to use perfumes, or taken advantage of their wealth and position as widows to enjoy life and to be independent, they would have been saluted as ladies of high rank and saintliness. As it is, of course, it is in order to appear beautiful that they put on sackcloth and ashes, and they endure fasting and filth merely to go down into the Gehenna of fire! As if they could not perish with the crowd whom the mob applauds! If it were Gentiles or Jews who thus assailed their mode of life, they would at least have the consolation of failing to please only those whom Christ Himself has failed to please. But, shameful to say, it is Christians who thus neglect the care of their own households, and, disregarding the beams in their own eyes, look for motes in those of their neighbors. They pull to pieces every profession Ps. ii. 4. Cf. 1 Sam. xii. 3. Damasus meus sermo erat, or “spoke of none but me.” Ironical. Matt. vii. 3. St. Jerome of religion, and think that they have found a remedy for their own doom, if they can disprove the holiness of others, if they can detract from every one, if they can show that those who perish are many, and sinners, a great multitude. 5. You bathe daily; another regards such over-niceness as defilement. You surfeit yourself on wild fowl and pride yourself on eating sturgeon; I, on the contrary, fill my belly with beans. You find pleasure in troops of laughing girls; I prefer Paula and Melanium who weep. You covet what belongs to others; they disdain what is their own. You like wines flavored with honey; they drink cold water, more delicious still. You count as lost what you cannot have, eat up, and devour on the moment; they believe in the Scriptures, and look for good things to come. And if they are wrong, and if the resurrection of the body on which they rely is a foolish delusion, what does it matter to you? We, on our side, look with disfavor on such a life as yours. You can fatten yourself on your good things as much as you please; I for my part prefer paleness and emaciation. You suppose that men like me are unhappy; we regard you as more unhappy still. Thus we reciprocate each other’s thoughts, and appear to each other mutually insane. 6. I write this in haste, dear Lady Asella, as I go on board, overwhelmed with grief and tears; yet I thank my God that I am counted worthy of the world’s hatred. Pray for me that, after Babylon, I may see Jerusalem once more; that Joshua, the son of Josedech, may have dominion over me, and not Nebuchadnezzar, that Ezra, whose name means helper, may come and restore me to my own country. I was a fool in wishing to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land, and in leaving Mount Sinai, to seek the help of Egypt. I forgot that the Gospel warns us that he who goes down from Jerusalem immediately falls among robbers, is spoiled, is wounded, is left for dead. But, although priest and Levite may disregard me, there is still the good Samaritan who, when men said to him, “Thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil,”930 disclaimed having a devil, but did not disclaim being a Samaritan, this being the Hebrew equivalent for our word guardian. Men call me a mischief-maker, and I take the title as a recognition of my faith. For I am but a servant, and the Jews still call my master a magician. The apostle, likewise, is spoken of as a deceiver. There hath no temptation taken me but such as is common to man. How few distresses have I endured, I who am yet a soldier of the cross! Men have laid to my charge a crime of which I am not guilty; but I know that I must enter the kingdom of heaven through evil report as well as through good. 7. Salute Paula and Eustochium, who, whatever the world may think, are always mine in Christ. Salute Albina, your mother, and Marcella, your sister; Marcellina also, and the holy Felicitas; and say to them all: “We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and there shall be revealed the principle by which each has lived.” 932 Haggai i. 1. Ps. cxxxvii. 4. Luke x. 30–35. Joh. viii. 48. Joh. viii. 49. I.e. Paul. See 2 Cor. vi. 9. He means the sin of incontinence. Rom. xiv. 10. And now, illustrious model of chastity and virginity, remember me, I beseech you, in your prayers, and by your intercessions calm the waves of the sea.

Ep. XLVI–XLVIII — Letter XLVI. Paula and Eustochium to Marcella.

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, which sets up to teach the goddess of invention. You were the first to set our tinder alight; the first, by precept and example, to urge us to adopt our present life. As a hen gathers her chickens, so did you take us under your wing. And will you now let us fly about at random with no mother near us? Will you leave us to dread the swoop of the hawk and the shadow of each passing bird of prey? Separated from you, we do what we can: we utter our mournful plaint, and more by sobs than by tears we adjure you to give back to us the Marcella whom we love. She is mild, she is suave, she is sweeter than the sweetest honey. She must not, therefore, be stern and morose to us, whom her winning ways have roused to adopt a life like her own. 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.”939 The patriarch—the first to receive a promise of Christ—is here told to leave the Chaldees, to leave the city of confusion and its rehoboth941or broad places; to leave also the plain of Shinar, where the tower of pride had been raised to heaven. He has to pass through the waves of this world, and to ford its rivers; those by which the saints sat down and wept when they remembered Zion, and Chebar’s flood, whence Ezekiel was carried to Jerusalem by the hair of his head. All this Abraham undergoes that he may dwell in a land of promise watered from above, and not like Egypt, from below, no producer of herbs for the weak and ailing, but 943 2 Esdras. i. 30; Matt. xxiii. 37. Gen. xii. 1. I.e. Babel—Gen. xi. 9. Gen. x. 11. Gen. xi. 2, 4. Ps. cxxxvii. 1. Ezek. viii. 3. Deut. xi. 10. Rom. xiv. 2. a land that looks for the early and the latter rain from heaven. It is a land of hills and valleys, and stands high above the sea. The attractions of the world it entirely wants, but its spiritual attractions are for this all the greater. Mary, the mother of the Lord, left the lowlands and made her way to the hill country, when, after receiving the angel’s message, she realized that she bore within her womb the Son of God. When of old the Philistines had been overcome, when their devilish audacity had been smitten, when their champion had fallen on his face to the earth, it was from this city that there went forth a procession of jubilant souls, a harmonious choir to sing our David’s victory over tens of thousands. Here, too, it was that the angel grasped his sword, and while he laid waste the whole of the ungodly city, marked out the temple of the Lord in the threshing floor of Ornan, king of the Jebusites. Thus early was it made plain that Christ’s church would grow up, not in Israel, but among the Gentiles. Turn back to Genesis, and you will find that this was the city over which Melchizedek held sway, that king of Salem who, as a type of Christ, offered to Abraham bread and wine, and even then consecrated the mystery which Christians consecrate in the body and blood of the Saviour. 3. Perhaps you will tacitly reprove us for deserting the order of Scripture, and letting our confused account ramble this way and that, as one thing or another strikes us. If so, we say once more what we said at the outset: love has no logic, and impatience knows no rule. In the Song of Songs the precept is given as a hard one: “Regulate your love towards me.”955 And so we plead that, if we err, we do so not from ignorance but from feeling. Well, then, to bring forward something still more out of place, we must go back to yet remoter times. Tradition has it that in this city, nay, more, on this very spot, Adam lived and died. The place where our Lord was crucified is called Calvary, because the skull of the primitive man was buried there. So it came to pass that the second Adam, that is the blood of Christ, as it dropped from the cross, washed away the sins of the buried protoplast, the first Adam, and thus the words of the apostle were fulfilled: “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.”959 It would be tedious to enumerate all the prophets and holy men who have been sent forth from this place. All that is strange and mysterious to us is familiar and natural to this city and country. By its very names, three in number, it proves the doctrine of the trinity. For it is called first Jebus, then Salem, then Jerusalem: names of which the first means “down-trodden,” the second “peace,” and the third “vision of peace.”960 For it is only by slow stages that we reach our goal; it is only 952 958 Deut. xi. 14. Deut. xi. 11. Luke i. 26–31, 39. 1 Sam. xviii. 6, 7. Gen. xiv. 18. Mysterium christianum in salvatoris sanguine et corpore dedicavit. Cant. ii. 4 b, Vulg. Hebrew = A.V. I.e. the place of a skull (Latin, Calvaria). One of Jerome’s fanciful ideas. Haddam is the Hebrew for “the blood.” ὁ πρωτόπλαστος = “the first-formed.” The word is applied to Adam in Wisd. vii. 1. Eph. v. 14. Cf. Hymns Ancient and Modern, No. 235. “Truly Jerusalem name we that shore St. Jerome after we have been trodden down that we are lifted up to see the vision of peace. Because of this peace Solomon, the man of peace, was born there, and “in peace was his place made.”962 King of kings, and lord of lords, his name and that of the city show him to be a type of Christ. Need we speak of David and his descendants, all of whom reigned here? As Judæa is exalted above all other provinces, so is this city exalted above all Judæa. To speak more tersely, the glory of the province is derived from its capital; and whatever fame the members possess is in every case due to the head. 4. You have long been anxious to break forth into speech; the very letters we have formed perceive it, and our paper already understands the question you are going to put. You will reply to us by saying: it was so of old, when “the Lord loved the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob,” and when her foundations were in the holy mountains. Even these verses, however, are susceptible of a deeper interpretation. But things are changed since then. The risen Lord has proclaimed in tones of thunder: “Your house is left unto you desolate.” With tears He has prophesied its downfall: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Behold your house is left unto you desolate.”964 The veil of the temple has been rent; an army has encompassed Jerusalem, it has been stained by the blood of the Lord. Now, therefore, its guardian angels have forsaken it and the grace of Christ has been withdrawn. Josephus, himself a Jewish writer, asserts that at the Lord’s crucifixion there broke from the temple voices of heavenly powers, saying: “Let us depart hence.” These and other considerations show that where grace abounded there did sin much more abound. Again, when the apostles received the command: “Go ye and teach all nations,”968 and when they said themselves: “It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you, but seeing ye put it from you…lo we turn to the Gentiles,”969 then all the spiritual importance of Judæa and its old intimacy with God were transferred by the apostles to the nations. 5. The difficulty is strongly stated, and may well puzzle even those proficient in Scripture; but for all that, it admits of an easy solution. The Lord wept for the fall of Jerusalem, and He would not have done so if He did not love it. He wept for Lazarus because He loved him. The truth is that it was the people who sinned and not the place. The capture of a city is involved in the slaying of its inhabitants. If Jerusalem was destroyed, it was that its people might be punished; if the temple was overthrown, it was that its figurative sacrifices might be abolished. As regards its site, lapse of time has but invested it with fresh grandeur. The Jews of old reverenced the Holy of Holies, because of the things contained in it—the cherubim, the mercy-seat, the ark of the covenant, the 967 Vision of peace that brings joy evermore.” Hebrew, Shelomoh, connected with shalem, peace. Ps. lxxvi. 2, LXX. Ps. lxxxvii. 1, 2. Matt. xxiii. 37, 38. Matt. xxvii. 51. Bellum Judaicum, vi. 5. Rom. v. 20. Matt. xxviii. 19. Acts xiii. 46. Sacramentum. Luke xix. 41. Joh. xi. 35, 36. St. Jerome manna, Aaron’s rod, and the golden altar. Does the Lord’s sepulchre seem less worthy of veneration? As often as we enter it we see the Saviour in His grave clothes, and if we linger we see again the angel sitting at His feet, and the napkin folded at His head. Long before this sepulchre was hewn out by Joseph, its glory was foretold in Isaiah’s prediction, “his rest shall be glorious,”976 meaning that the place of the Lord’s burial should be held in universal honor. 6. How, then, you will say, do we read in the apocalypse written by John: “The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall…kill them [that is, obviously, the prophets], and their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified?”977 If the great city where the Lord was crucified is Jerusalem, and if the place of His crucifixion is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt; then as the Lord was crucified at Jerusalem, Jerusalem must be Sodom and Egypt. Holy Scripture, I reply first of all, cannot contradict itself. One book cannot invalidate the drift of the whole. A single verse cannot annul the meaning of a book. Ten lines earlier in the apocalypse it is written: “Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles; and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.”978 The apocalypse was written by John long after the Lord’s passion, yet in it he speaks of Jerusalem as the holy city. But if so, how can he spiritually call it Sodom and Egypt? It is no answer to say that the Jerusalem which is called holy is the heavenly one which is to be, while that which is called Sodom is the earthly one tottering to its downfall. For it is the Jerusalem to come that is referred to in the description of the beast, “which shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and shall make war against the two prophets, and shall overcome them and kill them, and their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city.”979 At the close of the book it is farther described thus: “And the city lieth four-square, and the length of it and the breadth are the same as the height; and he measured the city with the golden reed twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the walls thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper; and the city was pure gold”980—and so on. Now where there is a square there can be neither length nor breadth. And what kind of measurement is that which makes length and breadth equal to height? And how can there be walls of jasper, or a whole city of pure gold; its foundations and its streets of precious stones, and its twelve gates each glowing with pearls? 7. Evidently this description cannot be taken literally (in fact, it is absurd to suppose a city the length, breadth and height of which are all twelve thousand furlongs), and therefore the details of it must be mystically understood. The great city which Cain first built and called after his son must be taken to represent this world, which the devil, that accuser of his brethren, that fratricide who is doomed to perish, has built of vice cemented with crime, and filled with iniquity. Therefore 978 John xx. 6, 7, 12. I.e. Joseph of Arimathæa.—Joh. xix. 38 sqq. Isa. xi. 10. Rev. xi. 7, 8, R.V. Rev. xi. 2. Rev. xi. 7, 8. Rev. xxi. 16–18. Gen. iv. 17. it is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. Thus it is written, “Sodom shall return to her former estate,”982 that is to say, the world must be restored as it has been before. For we cannot believe that Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim are to be built again: they must be left to lie in ashes forever. We never read of Egypt as put for Jerusalem: it always stands for this world. To collect from Scripture the countless proofs of this would be tedious: I shall adduce but one passage, a passage in which this world is most clearly called Egypt. The apostle Jude, the brother of James, writes thus in his catholic epistle: “I will, therefore, put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this how that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.”985 And, lest you should fancy Joshua the son of Nun to be meant, the passage goes on thus: “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.”986 Moreover, to convince you that in every place where Egypt, Sodom and Gomorrah are named together it is not these spots, but the present world, which is meant, he mentions them immediately in this sense. “Even as Sodom and Gomorrah,” he writes, “and the cities about them, in like manner giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”987 But what need is there to collect more proofs when, after the passion and the resurrection of the Lord, the evangelist Matthew tells us: “The rocks rent, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto many”? We must not interpret this passage straight off, as many people absurdly do, of the heavenly Jerusalem: the apparition there of the bodies of the saints could be no sign to men of the Lord’s rising. Since, therefore, the evangelists and all the Scriptures speak of Jerusalem as the holy city, and since the psalmist commands us to worship the Lord “at his footstool;”990 allow no one to call it Sodom and Egypt, for by it the Lord forbids men to swear because “it is the city of the great king.”991 8. The land is accursed, you say, because it has drunk in the blood of the Lord. On what grounds, then, do men regard as blessed those spots where Peter and Paul, the leaders of the Christian host, have shed their blood for Christ? If the confession of men and servants is glorious, must there not be glory likewise in the confession of their Lord and God? Everywhere we venerate the tombs of the martyrs; we apply their holy ashes to our eyes; we even touch them, if we may, with our lips. And yet some think that we should neglect the tomb in which the Lord Himself is buried. If we refuse to believe human testimony, let us at least credit the devil and his angels. For when in front of the Holy Sepulchre they are driven out of those bodies which they have possessed, they moan and tremble as if they stood before Christ’s judgment-seat, and grieve, too late that they have crucified Him in whose presence they now cower. If—as a wicked theory maintains—this holy 988 Deut. xxix. 23. A.V. “the Lord.” Jude 5. Jude 6. Jude 7. Matt. xxvii. 51, 53. E.g. Origen in his commentary on the passage. Ps. cxxxii. 7. Matt. v. 35. Matt. xxv. 41. St. Jerome place has, since the Lord’s passion, become an abomination, why was Paul in such haste to reach Jerusalem to keep Pentecost in it? Yet to those who held him back he said: “What mean ye to weep and to break my heart? For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem, for the name of the Lord Jesus.”994 Need I speak of those other holy and illustrious men who, after the preaching of Christ, brought their votive gifts and offerings to the brethren who were at Jerusalem? 9. Time forbids me to survey the period which has passed since the Lord’s ascension, or to recount the bishops, the martyrs, the divines, who have come to Jerusalem from a feeling that their devotion and knowledge would be incomplete and their virtue without the finishing touch, unless they adored Christ in the very spot where the gospel first flashed from the gibbet. If a famous orator blames a man for having learned Greek at Lilybæum instead of at Athens, and Latin in Sicily instead of at Rome (on the ground, obviously, that each province has its own characteristics), can we suppose a Christian’s education complete who has not visited the Christian Athens? 10. In speaking thus we do not mean to deny that the kingdom of God is within us, or to say that there are no holy men elsewhere; we merely assert in the strongest manner that those who stand first throughout the world are here gathered side by side. We ourselves are among the last, not the first; yet we have come hither to see the first of all nations. Of all the ornaments of the Church our company of monks and virgins is one of the finest; it is like a fair flower or a priceless gem. Every man of note in Gaul hastens hither. The Briton, “sundered from our world,”997 no sooner makes progress in religion than he leaves the setting sun in quest of a spot of which he knows only through Scripture and common report. Need we recall the Armenians, the Persians, the peoples of India and Arabia? Or those of our neighbor, Egypt, so rich in monks; of Pontus and Cappadocia; of Cæle-Syria and Mesopotamia and the teeming east? In fulfilment of the Saviour’s words, “Wherever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together,”998 they all assemble here and exhibit in this one city the most varied virtues. Differing in speech, they are one in religion, and almost every nation has a choir of its own. Yet amid this great concourse there is no arrogance, no disdain of self-restraint; all strive after humility, that greatest of Christian virtues. Whosoever is last is here regarded as first. Their dress neither provokes remark nor calls for admiration. In whatever guise a man shows himself he is neither censured nor flattered. Long fasts help no one here. Starvation wins no deference, and the taking of food in moderation is not condemned. “To his own master” each one “standeth or falleth.”1000 No man judges another lest he be judged of the Lord. Backbiting, so common in other parts, is wholly unknown here. Sensuality and excess are far removed from us. And in the city there are so many places of prayer that a day would not be sufficient to go round them all. 11. But, as every one praises most what is within his reach, let us pass now to the cottage-inn which sheltered Christ and Mary. With what expressions and what language can we set before 998 Acts xxi. 13. Cicero of Cæcilius (in Q. Cæc. xii.). Luke xvii. 21. Virgil, E. i. 67. Luke xvii. 37. Cf. Matt. xix. 30. Rom. xiv. 4. Matt. vii. 1. Luke ii. 7. St. Jerome you the cave of the Saviour? The stall where he cried as a babe can be best honored by silence; for words are inadequate to speak its praise. Where are the spacious porticoes? Where are the gilded ceilings? Where are the mansions furnished by the miserable toil of doomed wretches? Where are the costly halls raised by untitled opulence for man’s vile body to walk in? Where are the roofs that intercept the sky, as if anything could be finer than the expanse of heaven? Behold, in this poor crevice of the earth the Creator of the heavens was born; here He was wrapped in swaddling clothes; here He was seen by the shepherds; here He was pointed out by the star; here He was adored by the wise men. This spot is holier, me-thinks, than that Tarpeian rock which has shown itself displeasing to God by the frequency with which it has been struck by lightning. 12. Read the apocalypse of John, and consider what is sung therein of the woman arrayed in purple, and of the blasphemy written upon her brow, of the seven mountains, of the many waters, and of the end of Babylon. “Come out of her, my people,” so the Lord says, “that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”1005 Turn back also to Jeremiah and pay heed to what he has written of like import: “Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul.”1006 For “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit.”1007 It is true that Rome has a holy church, trophies of apostles and martyrs, a true confession of Christ. The faith has been preached there by an apostle, heathenism has been trodden down, the name of Christian is daily exalted higher and higher. But the display, power, and size of the city, the seeing and the being seen, the paying and the receiving of visits, the alternate flattery and detraction, talking and listening, as well as the necessity of facing so great a throng even when one is least in the mood to do so—all these things are alike foreign to the principles and fatal to the repose of the monastic life. For when people come in our way we either see them coming and are compelled to speak, or we do not see them and lay ourselves open to the charge of haughtiness. Sometimes, also, in returning visits we are obliged to pass through proud portals and gilded doors and to face the clamor of carping lackeys. But, as we have said above, in the cottage of Christ all is simple and rustic: and except for the chanting of psalms there is complete silence. Wherever one turns the laborer at his plough sings alleluia, the toiling mower cheers himself with psalms, and the vine-dresser while he prunes his vine sings one of the lays of David. These are the songs of the country; these, in popular phrase, its love ditties: these the shepherd whistles; these the tiller uses to aid his toil. 13. But what are we doing? Forgetting what is required of us, we are taken up with what we wish. Will the time never come when a breathless messenger shall bring the news that our dear Marcella has reached the shores of Palestine, and when every band of monks and every troop of virgins shall unite in a song of welcome? In our excitement we are already hurrying to meet you: without waiting for a vehicle, we hasten off at once on foot. We shall clasp you by the hand, we shall look upon your face; and when, after long waiting, we at last embrace you, we shall find it hard to tear ourselves away. Will the day never come when we shall together enter the Saviour’s Otherwise called the capitol. Here stood the great temple of Jupiter, which was to the religion of Rome what the Parthenon was to that of Athens. Rev. xvii. 4, 5, 9; i. 15; xvii; xviii. Rev. xviii. 4. Jer. li. 6. Rev. xviii. 2. cave, and together weep in the sepulchre of the Lord with His sister and with His mother? Then shall we touch with our lips the wood of the cross, and rise in prayer and resolve upon the Mount of Olives with the ascending Lord. We shall see Lazarus come forth bound with grave clothes, we shall look upon the waters of Jordan purified for the washing of the Lord. Thence we shall pass to the folds of the shepherds, we shall pray together in the mausoleum of David. We shall see the prophet, Amos, upon his crag blowing his shepherd’s horn. We shall hasten, if not to the tents, to the monuments of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and of their three illustrious wives. We shall see the fountain in which the eunuch was immersed by Philip. We shall make a pilgrimage to Samaria, and side by side venerate the ashes of John the Baptist, of Elisha, and of Obadiah. We shall enter the very caves where in the time of persecution and famine the companies of the prophets were fed. If only you will come, we shall go to see Nazareth, as its name denotes, the flower of Galilee. Not far off Cana will be visible, where the water was turned into wine. We shall make our way to Tabor, and see the tabernacles there which the Saviour shares, not, as Peter once wished, with Moses and Elijah, but with the Father and with the Holy Ghost. Thence we shall come to the Sea of Gennesaret, and when there we shall see the spots where the five thousand were filled with five loaves, and the four thousand with seven. The town of Nain will meet our eyes, at the gate of which the widow’s son was raised to life. Hermon too will be visible, and the torrent of Endor, at which Sisera was vanquished. Our eyes will look also on Capernaum, the scene of so many of our Lord’s signs—yes, and on all Galilee besides. And when, accompanied by Christ, we shall have made our way back to our cave through Shiloh and Bethel, and those other places where churches are set up like standards to commemorate the Lord’s victories, then we shall sing heartily, we shall weep copiously, we shall pray unceasingly. Wounded with the Saviour’s shaft, we shall say one to another: “I have found Him whom my soul loveth; I will hold Him and will not let Him go.”1026 Letter XLVII. To Desiderius. 1013 1019 1025 Joh. xix. 25. Acts i. 9, 12. Joh. xi. 43, 44. Matt. iii. 13. Luke ii. 8. “Who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa”—Am. i. 1. Sarah, Rebekah, Leah—Gen. xlix. 31. Acts viii. 36. 1 Kings xviii. 3, 4. Lit. “sprout.” In Isa. xi. 1 it is rendered by A.V. “branch.” Joh. ii. 1–11. Matt. xvii. 1–9. Matt. xiv. 15, sqq. Matt. xv. 32, sqq. Luke vii. 11, sqq. Ps. lxxxiii. 9, 10. Cant. iii. 4, Vulg. 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.

Ep. XLIX–LI — Letter XLIX. To Pammachius.

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 Heb. v. 10. Joh. xx. 19, 27. Cf. Letter XXII. § 18. Luke xvi. 19–25. St. Jerome 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.”1201 I am not so fortunate as are most of the writers of the day—able, that is, to correct my trifles whenever I like. When once I have written anything, either my admirers or my ill-wishers—from different motives, but with equal zeal—sow my work broadcast among the public; and their language, whether it is that of eulogy or of criticism, is apt to run to excess. They are guided not by the merits of the piece, but by their own angry feelings. Accordingly, I have done what I could. I have dedicated to you a defence of the work in question, feeling sure that when you have read it you will yourself satisfy the doubts of others on my behalf; or else, if you too turn up your nose at the task, you will have to explain in some new manner that section of the apostle in which he discusses virginity and marriage. 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. When Pierius, sifting and expounding the apostle’s meaning, comes to the words, “I would that all men were even as I myself,”1205 he makes this comment upon them: “In saying this Paul plainly preaches abstinence from marriage.” Is the fault here mine, or am I responsible for harshness? Compared with this sentence of Pierius, all that I have ever written is mild indeed. Consult the commentaries of the above-named writers and take advantage of the Church libraries; you will then more speedily finish as you would wish the enterprise which you have so happily begun. 4. I hear that the hopes of the entire city are centred in you, and that bishop and people are agreed in wishing for your exaltation. To be a bishop is much, to deserve to be one is more. If you read the books of the sixteen prophets which I have rendered into Latin from the Hebrew; and if, when you have done so, you express satisfaction with my labors, the news will encourage me to take out of my desk some other works now shut up in it. I have lately translated Job into our mother tongue: you will be able to borrow a copy of it from your cousin, the saintly Marcella. Read it both in Greek and in Latin, and compare the old version with my rendering. You will then clearly see that the difference between them is that between truth and falsehood. Some Hor. AP. 390. See the Preface to Jerome’s Comm. on Daniel. 1 Corinthians. Master of the catechetical school of Alexandria, 265 a.d. His writings have perished. His name occurs again in Letter LXX. § 4. Ad optata cæptaque pervenies. Pontifex. Sacerdos. Thus including Daniel. of my commentaries upon the twelve prophets I have sent to the reverend father Domnio, also the four books of Kings—that is, the two called Samuel and the two called Malâchim. If you care to read these you will learn for yourself how difficult it is to understand the Holy Scriptures, and particularly the prophets; and how through the fault of the translators passages which for the Jews flow clearly on for us abound with mistakes. Once more, you must not in my small writings look for any such eloquence as that which for Christ’s sake you disregard in Cicero. 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; in order that it may not speak to the idle schools and few disciples of the philosophers, but may address itself rather to the entire human race. 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 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. 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. You write to me of these—nay, of one in particular—a lounger who is to be seen in the streets, at crossings, and in public places; a monk who is a noisy news-monger, clever only in detraction, and eager, in spite of the beam in his own eye, to remove the mote in his neighbor’s. And you tell me that he preaches publicly against me, gnawing, rending, and tearing asunder with his fangs the books that I have written against Jovinian. You inform me, moreover, that this home-grown dialectician, this mainstay of the Plautine company, has read neither the “Categories” of Aristotle nor his treatise “On Interpretation,” nor his “Analytics,” nor yet the “Topics” of Cicero, but that, moving as he does only in uneducated circles, and frequenting no society but that of weak women, he ventures to construct illogical syllogisms and to unravel by subtle arguments what he is pleased to call my sophisms. How foolish I have been to suppose that without philosophy there can be no knowledge of these subjects; and to account it a more important part of composition to erase than to write! In vain have I perused the commentaries of Alexander; to no purpose has a skilled teacher used the “Introduction” of Porphyry to instruct me in logic; and—to make light of human learning—I have gained nothing at all by having Gregory of Nazianzum and Didymus as my catechists in the Holy Virg. A. iv. 298. Ps. l. 20. Matt. vii. 3–5. St. Jerome Scriptures. My acquisition of Hebrew has been wasted labor; and so also has been the daily study which from my youth I have bestowed upon the Law and the Prophets, the Gospels and the Apostles. 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 Carneades1215—to argue on this side or on that, for justice or against it. The world escaped a great danger, and civil actions and suits concerning succession were saved from a yawning gulf on the day when, despising the bar, he transferred himself to the Church. For, had he been unwilling, who could ever have been proved innocent? And, if he once began to reckon the points of the case upon his fingers, and to spread his syllogistic nets, what criminal would his pleading have failed to save? Had he but stamped his foot, or fixed his eyes, or knitted his brow, or moved his hand, or twirled his beard, he would at once have thrown dust in the eyes of the jury. No wonder that such a complete Latinist and so profound a master of eloquence overcomes poor me, who—as I have been some time away (from Rome), and without opportunities for speaking Latin—am half a Greek if not altogether a barbarian. No wonder, I say, that he overcomes me when his eloquence has crushed Jovinian in person. Good Jesus! what! even Jovinian that great and clever man! So clever, indeed, that no one can understand his writings, and that when he sings it is only for himself—and for the muses! 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”1217). In that case he should have written to convict me or to question me, the course taken by Pammachius, a man of high attainments and position. To this latter I defended myself as best I could, and in a lengthy letter explained the exact sense of my words. He might at least have copied the diffidence which led you to extract and arrange such passages as seemed to A philosopher of the Academy noted for his opposition to stoicism. Eight years. Jas. iii. 2. give offence; asking me for corrections or explanations, and not supposing me so mad that in one and the same book I should write for marriage and against it. 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.”1218 Or if he has really the right to apply the censor’s rod to all writers, and fancies himself a man of learning because he alone understands Jovinian (you know the proverb: Balbus best knows what Balbus means); yet, as Atilius reminds us, “we are not all writers.” Jovinian himself—an unlettered man of letters if ever there was one—will with most justice proclaim the fact to him. “That the bishops condemn me,” he says, “is not reason but treason. I want no answers from nobodies, who, while they have authority to put me down, have not the wit to teach me. Let one write against me who has a tongue that I can understand, and whom to vanquish will be to vanquish all. “‘I know full well: believe me, I have felt The hero’s force when rising o’er his shield He hurls his whizzing spear.’1220 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. How often, when I have met him at meetings, has he aroused my wrath and put me into a passion! How often has he spat upon me, and then departed spat upon! But these are vulgar methods, and any of my followers can use them. I appeal to books, to those memorials which must be handed down to posterity. Let us speak by our writings, that the silent reader may judge between us; and that, as I have a flock of disciples, he may have one also—flatterers and parasites worthy of the Gnatho and Phormio who is their master.” 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 Lam. iii. 27, 28. An early Roman dramatist of whose works only a few fragments remain. He is said to have translated the Electra of Sophocles, but for the most part to have preferred comedy to tragedy. Virgil, Æn. xi. 283, 284. Persius i. 29. Characters in the Eunuchus and Phormio of Terence. my hand from the ferule.”1223 Of me, too, it may be said in the words of Horace, “Flee from him; he has hay on his horn.”1224 But I prefer to be a disciple of Him who says, “I gave my back to the smiters…I hid not my face from shame and spitting.”1225 When He was reviled He reviled not again. After the buffeting, the cross, the scourge, the blasphemies, at the very last He prayed for His crucifiers, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”1227 I, too, pardon the error of a brother. He has been deceived, I feel sure, by the art of the devil. Among the women he was held clever and eloquent; but, when my poor writings reached Rome, dreading me as a rival, he tried to rob me of my laurels. No man on earth, he resolved, should please his eloquent self, unless such as commanded respect rather than sought it, and showed themselves men to be feared more than favored. A man of consummate address, he desired, like an old soldier, with one stroke of the sword to strike down both his enemies, and to make clear to every one that, whatever view he might take, Scripture was always with him. Well, he must condescend to send me his account of the matter, and to correct my indiscreet language, not by censure but by instruction. If he tries to do this, he will find that what seems forcible on a lounge is not equally forcible in court; and that it is one thing to discuss the doctrines of the divine law amid the spindles and work-baskets of girls and another to argue concerning them among men of education. As it is, without hesitation or shame, he raises again and again the noisy shout, “Jerome condemns marriage,” and, whilst he constantly moves among women with child, crying infants, and marriage-beds, he suppresses the words of the apostle just to cover me—poor me—with odium. However, when he comes by and by to write books and to grapple with me at close quarters, then he will feel it, then he will stick fast; Epicurus and Aristippus will not be near him then; the swineherds will not come to his aid; the prolific sow will not so much as grunt. For I also may say, with Turnus: Father, I too can launch a forceful spear, And when I strike blood follows from the wound. 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. 1229 Hor. S. i. iv. 34. Isa. l. 6. Luke xxiii. 34. Viz. Jerome and Jovinian. According to both these philosophers pleasure is the highest good. The followers of Jovinian. Jovinian himself. Virg. A. xii. 50, 51. 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,”1234 what pride in our clerical position will be able to avail us who sin not only in thought and feeling, but in speech? I have heard, of course, that you are incensed against me, that you are angry, and that you threaten to write about me—not merely to particular places and provinces, but to the uttermost ends of the earth. Where is that fear of God which should make us tremble with the trembling spoken of by the Lord—“Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment”? Not that I greatly care for your writing what you please. For Isaiah tells us of letters written on papyrus and cast upon the waters—missives soon carried away by time and tide. I have done you no harm, I have inflicted no injury upon you, I have extorted nothing from you by violence. My action concerned a monastery whose inmates were foreigners in no way subject to your provincial jurisdiction. Moreover their regard for my insignificance and for the letters which I frequently addressed to them had commenced to produce a feeling of dislike to communion with you. Feeling, therefore, that too great strictness or scrupulosity on my part might have the effect of alienating them from the Church with its ancient faith, I ordained one of the brothers deacon, and after he had ministered as such, admitted him to the priesthood. You should, I think, have been grateful to me for this, knowing, as you surely must, that it is the fear of God which has compelled me to act in this way, and particularly when you recollect that God’s priesthood is everywhere the same, and that I have simply made provision for the wants of the Church. For, although each individual bishop of the Church has under him churches which are placed in his A play on words. Clericatus (“clerical position”) is a derivative of clerus (κλῆρος), the word used in the LXX. for “lot.” Matt. v. 22. Isa. xviii. 2, LXX. St. Jerome charge, and although no man may stretch himself beyond his measure, yet the love of Christ, which is without dissimulation, is set up as an example to us all; and we must consider not so much the thing done as the time and place, the mode and motive, of doing it. I saw that the monastery contained a large number of reverend brothers, and that the reverend presbyters, Jerome and Vincent, through modesty and humility, were unwilling to offer the sacrifices permitted to their rank, and to labor in that part of their calling which ministers more than any other to the salvation of Christians. I knew, moreover, that you could not find or lay hands on this servant of God who had several times fled from you simply because he was reluctant to undertake the onerous duties of the priesthood, and that no other bishop could easily find him. Accordingly, I was a good deal surprised when, by the ordering of God, he came to me with the deacons of the monastery and others of the brethren, to make satisfaction to me for some grievance or other which I had against them. While, therefore, the Collect was being celebrated in the church of the villa which adjoins our monastery—he being quite ignorant and wholly unsuspicious of my purpose—I gave orders to a number of deacons to seize him and to stop his mouth, lest in his eagerness to free himself he might adjure me in the name of Christ. First of all, then, I ordained him deacon, setting before him the fear of God, and forcing him to minister; for he made a hard struggle against it, crying out that he was unworthy, and protesting that this heavy burden was beyond his strength. It was with difficulty, then, that I overcame his reluctance, persuading him as well as I could with passages from Scripture, and setting before him the commandments of God. And when he had ministered in the offering of the holy sacrifices, once more with great difficulty I closed his mouth and ordained him presbyter. Then, using the same arguments as before, I induced him to sit in the place set apart for the presbyters. After this I wrote to the reverend presbyters and other brothers of the monastery, chiding them for not having written to me about him. For a year before I had heard many of them complain that they had no one to celebrate for them the sacraments of the Lord. All then agreed in asking him to undertake the duty, pointing out how great his usefulness would be to the community of the monastery. I blamed them for omitting to write to me and to propose that I should ordain him, when the opportunity was given to them to do so. 2. All this I have done, as I said just now, relying on that Christian love which you, I feel sure, cherish towards my insignificance; not to mention the fact that I held the ordination in a monastery, and not within the limits of your jurisdiction. How truly blessed is the mildness and complacency of the bishops of (my own) Cyprus, as well as their simplicity, though to your refinement and discrimination it appears deserving only of God’s pity! For many bishops in communion with me have ordained presbyters in my province whom I had been unable to capture, and have sent to me deacons and subdeacons whom I have been glad to receive. I myself, too, have urged the bishop Philo of blessed memory, and the reverend Theoprepus, to make provision for the Church of Christ by ordaining presbyters in those churches of Cyprus which, although they were accounted to belong to my see, happened to be close to them, and this for the reason that my province was large and Cf. 2 Cor. x. 14. Rom. xii. 9. Paulinian, Jerome’s brother, at this time about 28 years of age. I.e. the short service which preceded the eucharist. The words might, however, be rendered, “When the congregation was gathered together.” Subdeacons cannot be traced back earlier than the third century. At first their province seems to have been to keep the church doors during divine service. St. Jerome straggling. But for my part I have never ordained deaconesses nor sent them into the provinces of others, nor have I done anything to rend the Church. Why, then, have you thought fit to be so angry and indignant with me for that work of God which I have wrought for the edification of the brethren, and not for their destruction? Moreover, I have been much surprised at the assertion which you have made to my clergy, that you sent me a message by that reverend presbyter, the abbot Gregory, that I was to ordain no one, and that I promised to comply, saying, “Am I a stripling, or do I not know the canons?” By God’s word I am telling you the truth when I say that I know and have heard nothing of all this, and that I have not the slightest recollection of using any language of the sort. As, however, I have had misgivings, lest possibly, being only a man, I may have forgotten this among so many other matters, I have made inquiry of the reverend Gregory, and of the presbyter Zeno, who is with him. Of these, the abbot Gregory replies that he knows nothing whatever about the matter, while Zeno says that the presbyter Rufinus, in the course of some desultory remarks, spoke these words. “Will the reverend bishop, think you, venture to ordain any persons?” but that the conversation went no further. I, Epiphanius, however, have never either received the message or answered it.

Against Eunomius — St. Gregory of Nyssa

Against Heresies — St. Irenaeus of Lyons

Against Jovinianus — St. Jerome

Against Those Who Oppose Holy Icons

Against Vigilantius and Against John — St. Jerome

Against the Errors of the Latins

Answer to Eunomius

Canons of the Seven Ecumenical Councils

Catechetical Lectures — St. Cyril of Jerusalem

Contra Gentes — St. Athanasius of Alexandria

De Synodis — St. Hilary of Poitiers

Dialogue Against the Pelagians — St. Jerome

Dialogue with Trypho — St. Justin Martyr

Discourses Against the Arians — St. Athanasius of Alexandria

Ecclesiastical History — Eusebius of Caesarea

Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs

Epistle of Barnabas — Unknown

Epistle to Diognetus — Unknown

Epistles of Ignatius — St. Ignatius of Antioch

Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — St. John of Damascus

Exposition of the Christian Faith — St. Ambrose of Milan

Festal Letters — St. Athanasius of Alexandria

Fifty Spiritual Homilies

First Epistle to the Corinthians — St. Clement of Rome

Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenaeus

Fragments of Papias — St. Papias of Hierapolis

History of the Arians — St. Athanasius of Alexandria

Homilies on Romans

Homilies on the Gospel of John

Letters C–CLV — St. Jerome

Letters I–LI — St. Jerome

Letters LII–XCIX — St. Jerome

Letters of Leo the Great — St. Leo the Great

Letters on Nestorius · On the Unity of Christ

Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit

Letters — St. Basil the Great

Life of Constantine — Eusebius of Caesarea

Lives of the Monks — St. Jerome

Longer and Shorter Rules · Letters

My Life in Christ

Mystical Theology

On Virginity — St. Gregory of Nyssa

On the Councils — St. Athanasius of Alexandria

On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology — Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

On the Duties of the Clergy — St. Ambrose of Milan

On the Holy Spirit — St. Ambrose of Milan

On the Holy Spirit — St. Basil the Great

On the Holy Spirit — St. Basil the Great

On the Incarnation

On the Life of Antony

On the Making of Man — St. Gregory of Nyssa

On the Mysteries and On the Sacraments — St. Ambrose of Milan

On the Priesthood — St. John Chrysostom

On the Soul and the Resurrection

On the Soul and the Resurrection — St. Gregory of Nyssa

On the Trinity — St. Hilary of Poitiers

On the Unity of the Church

Orations and Letters — St. Gregory of Nyssa

Orthodox Confession of Faith

Other Writings of Justin Martyr — St. Justin Martyr

Other Writings — St. Justin Martyr

Pastoral Rule — St. Gregory the Great

Prefaces to the Vulgate — St. Jerome

Register of Epistles — St. Gregory the Great

Select Letters — St. Gregory Nazianzen

Select Orations — St. Gregory Nazianzen

Selected Ethical Works and Letters — St. Ambrose of Milan

Sermons of Leo the Great — St. Leo the Great

The Apologetic Writings — St. Athanasius of Alexandria

The Apologies — St. Justin Martyr

The Dialogues — St. Jerome

The Didache

The Gospel of Matthew

The Great Catechism — St. Gregory of Nyssa

The Hexaemeron — St. Basil the Great

The Martyrdom of Polycarp

The Philokalia

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers — The Alphabetical Collection

The Seven Ecumenical Councils — Various

Theological Tractates — St. Gregory of Nyssa