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| To Domnio.
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Letter L. To
Domnio.
Domnio, a Roman (called in Letter XLV. “the Lot of
our time”), had written to Jerome to tell him that an ignorant
monk had been traducing his books “against Jovinian.”
Jerome, in reply, sharply rebukes the folly of his critic and comments
on the want of straightforwardness in his conduct. He concludes the
letter with an emphatic restatement of his original position. Written
in 394 a.d.
1. Your letter is full at once of affection and of
complaining. The affection is your own, which prompts you unceasingly
to warn me of impending danger, and which makes you on my behalf
Of safest things distrustful and afraid.1212
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.1213
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.1214
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 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
| 1215 A philosopher of the
Academy noted for his opposition to stoicism. | —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 time1216
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 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 Atilius1219
| 1219 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. | 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
| 1220 Virgil, Æn. xi.
283, 284. |
He is strong in argument, intricate and tenacious, one to fight with
his head down. Often has he cried out against me in the streets from
late one night till early the next. He is a well-built man, and his
thews are those of an athlete. Secretly I believe him to be a follower
of my teaching. He never blushes or stops to weigh his words: his only
aim is to speak as loud as possible. So famous is he for his eloquence
that his sayings are held up as models to our curly-headed
youngsters.1221
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 Phormio1222
| 1222 Characters in the
Eunuchus and Phormio of Terence. |
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 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.1226
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,1228
| 1228 Viz. Jerome and
Jovinian. | 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 Aristippus1229
will not be near him then; the swineherds1230
| 1230 The followers of
Jovinian. |
will not come to his aid; the prolific sow1231
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.1232
| 1232 Virg. A. xii. 50,
51. |
But if he refuses to write, and fancies that abuse is as effective
as criticism, then, in spite of all the lands and seas and peoples
which lie between us, he must hear at least the echo of my cry,
“I do not condemn marriage,” “I do not condemn
wedlock.” Indeed—and this I say to make my meaning quite
clear to him—I should like every one to take a wife who, because
they get frightened in the night, cannot manage to sleep alone.1233
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