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| To Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria.
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Letter LXXXII. To Theophilus Bishop of
Alexandria.
Two years after his former attempt (see Letter LXIII.)
Theophilus again wrote to Jerome urging him to be reconciled with John
of Jerusalem. Jerome replies that there is nothing he desires more
earnestly than peace but that this must be real and not a hollow truce.
He speaks very bitterly of John who has, he alleges, intrigued to
procure his banishment from Palestine. He also deals with the
ordination of his brother Paulinian (for which see Letter LI.) and
defends himself for having translated Origen’s commentaries by
adducing the example of Hilary of Poitiers. This letter should be
compared with the Treatise “Against John of Jerusalem” in
this volume. Its date is 399 a.d.
1. Your letter shews you to possess that heritage of the
Lord of which when going to the Father he said to the apostles,
“peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you,”2496
and to own the happiness described in
the words, “blessed are the peace-makers.”2497
You coax as a father, you teach as a
master, you enjoin as a bishop. You come to me not with a rod and
severity but in a spirit of kindness, gentleness, and meekness.2498
Your opening words echo the humility
of Christ who saved men not with thunder and lightning2499
but as a wailing babe in the manger and
as a silent sufferer upon the cross. You have read the prediction made in one who was a
type of Him, “Lord, remember David and all his meekness,”2500
and you know how it was fulfilled afterwards
in Himself. “Learn of me,” He said, “for I am meek
and lowly in heart.”2501
You have quoted
many passages from the sacred books in praise of peace, you have
flitted like a bee over the flowery fields of scripture, you have
culled with cunning eloquence all that is sweet and conducive to
concord. I was already running after peace, but you have made me
quicken my pace: my sails were set for the voyage but your exhortation
has filled them with a stronger breeze. I drink in the sweet streams of
peace not reluctantly and with aversion but eagerly and with open
mouth.
2. But what can I do, I who can only wish for peace and
have no power to bring it about? Even though the wish may win its
recompense with God, its futility must still sadden him who cherishes
it. When the apostle said, “as much as lieth in you, live
peaceably with all men,”2502
he knew quite well
that the realisation of peace depends upon the consent of two parties.
The prophet truly cries “They say Peace, peace: and yet there is
no peace.”2503
To overthrow
peace by actions while professing it in words is not hard. To point out
its advantages is one thing and to strive for it another. Men’s
speeches may be all for unity but their actions may enforce bondage. I
wish for peace as much as others; and not only do I wish for it, I ask
for it. But the peace which I want is the peace of Christ; a true
peace, a peace without rancour, a peace which does not involve war, a
peace which will not reduce opponents but will unite friends. How can I
term domination peace? I must call things by their right names. Where
there is hatred there let men talk of feuds; and where there is mutual
esteem, there only let peace be spoken of. For my part I neither rend
the church nor separate myself from the communion of the fathers. From
my very cradle, I may say, I have been reared on Catholic milk; and no
one can be a better churchman than one who has never been a heretic.
But I know nothing of a peace that is without love or of a communion
that is without peace. In the gospel I read:—“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.”2504
If then we may not offer gifts that
are our own unless we are at peace with our brothers; how much less can
we receive the body of Christ if we cherish enmity in our hearts? How
can I conscientiously approach Christ’s eucharist and answer the
Amen2505
if I doubt the charity of him who ministers
it?
3. Hear me, I beg you with patience and do not take
truthfulness for flattery. Is any man reluctant to communicate with
you? Does any turn his face away when you hold out your hand? Does any
at the holy banquet offer you the kiss of Judas?2506
At your approach the monks instead of
trembling rejoice. They race to meet you and leaving their dens in the
desert are fain to master you by their humility. What compels them to
come forth? Is it not their love for you? What draws together the
scattered dwellers in the desert? Is it not the esteem in which they
hold you? A parent ought to love his children; and not only a parent
but a bishop ought to be loved by his children. Neither ought to be
feared. There is an old saying:2507
| 2507 Attributed by Cicero
to Ennius. | “whom
a man fears he hates; and whom he hates, he would fain see dead.”
Accordingly, while for the young the holy scripture makes fear the
beginning of knowledge,2508
it also tells us
that “perfect love casteth out fear.”2509
You exact no obedience from them; therefore
the monks obey you. You offer them a kiss; therefore they bow the neck.
You shew yourself a common soldier; therefore they make you their
general. Thus from being one among many you become one above many.
Freedom is easily roused if attempts are made to crush it. No one gets
more from a free man than he who does not force him to be a slave. I
know the canons of the church; I know what rank her ministers hold; and
from men and books I have daily up to the present learned and gathered
many things. The kingdom of the mild David was quickly dismembered by
one who chastised his people with scorpions and fancied that his
fingers were thicker than his father’s loins.2510
The Roman people refused to brook insolence
even in a king.2511
| 2511 Tarquin the Proud the
last king of Rome was driven into exile because of his many acts of
tyranny. | Moses was leader
of the host of Israel; he brought ten plagues upon Egypt; sky, earth,
and sea alike obeyed his commands: yet he is spoken of as “very
meek above all the men which were” at that time “upon the
face of the earth.”2512
He maintained his
forty-years’ supremacy because he tempered the insolence of
office with gentleness and meekness. When he was being stoned by the
people he made intercession for
them;2513
nay more he wished to be blotted out of
God’s book sooner than that the flock committed to him should
perish.2514
He sought to imitate the Shepherd
who would, he knew, carry on his shoulders even the wandering sheep.
“The good Shepherd”—they are the Lord’s own
words—“layeth down his life for the sheep.”2515
One of his disciples can wish to be
anathema from Christ for his brethren’s sake, his kinsmen
according to the flesh who were Israelites.2516
If then Paul can desire to perish that the lost may not be lost, how
much should good parents not provoke their children to wrath2517
or by too great severity embitter those
who are naturally mild.
4. The limits of a letter compel me to restrain myself;
otherwise, indignation would make me diffuse. In an epistle which its
writer regards as conciliatory but which to me appears full of malice
my opponent2518
| 2518 John, Bishop of
Jerusalem, who had accused Jerome of Origenism, a charge which was
brought against himself by Epiphanius (see Letter LI.). | admits that I have never
calumniated him or accused him of heresy. Why then does he calumniate
me by spreading a rumour that I am infected with that awful malady and
am in revolt against the Church? Why is he so ready to spare his real
assailants and so eager to injure me who have done nothing to injure
him? Before my brother’s ordination he said nothing of any
dogmatic difference between himself and pope Epiphanius. What then can
have “forced” him—I use his own word—publicly
to argue a point which no one had yet raised? One so full of wisdom as
you knows well the danger of such discussions and that silence is in
such cases the safest course; except, indeed, on some occasion which
renders it imperative to deal with great matters. What ability and
eloquence it must have needed to compress into a single sermon—as
he boasts to have done2519
—all the
topics which the most learned writers have treated in detail in
voluminous treatises! But this is nothing to me: it is for the hearers
of the sermon to notice and for the writer of the letter to realize.
But as for me he ought of his own accord to acquit me of bringing the
charge against him. I was not present and did not hear the sermon. I
was only one of the many, indeed hardly one of them; for while others
were crying out I held my peace. Let us confront the accused and the
accuser, and let us give credit to him whose services, life, and
doctrine are seen to be the best.
5. You see, do you not, that I shut my eyes to many
things and touch upon others only in the most cursory manner, hinting
at what I suppose rather than saying out what I think.
I understand and approve your manœuvres;2520
how in the interests of the peace of the
Church you stop your ears when you come within range of the Sirens.
Moreover, trained as you have been from childhood in sacred studies,
you know exactly what is meant by each expression which you use. You
knowingly employ ambiguous terms and carefully balanced sentences so as
not to condemn others2521
or repudiate
us.2522
But it is not a pure faith and a frank
confession which look for quibbles or circumlocutions. What is simply
believed must be professed with equal simplicity. For my part I could
cry out—though it were amid the swords and fires of Babylon,
“why does the answer evade the question? why is there no frank,
straightforward declaration?” From beginning to end all is
shrinking, compromise, ambiguity: as though he were trying to walk on
spikes of corn. His blood boils with eagerness for peace; yet he will
not give a straightforward answer! others are free to insult him; for,
when he is insulted, he does not venture to retaliate. I meantime hold
my peace: for the present I shall let it be thought that I am too busy,
or ignorant, or afraid; for how would he treat me were I to accuse him,
if when I praise him—as he admits himself that I do—he
secretly traduces me?
6. His whole letter is less an exposition of his faith
than a mass of calumnies aimed at myself. Without any of those mutual
courtesies which men may use towards each other without flattery, he
takes up my name again and again, flouts it, and bandies it about as
though I were blotted out of the book of the living. He thinks that he
has beaten me black and blue with his letter; and that I live for the
trifles at which he aims, I who from my boyhood have been shut up in a
monastic cell, and have always made it my aim to be rather than to seem
a good man. Some of us, it is true, he mentions with respect, but only
that he may afterwards wound us more deeply. As if, forsooth, we too
have no open secrets to reveal! One of his charges is that we have
allowed a slave to be ordained. Yet he himself has clergymen of the
same class, and he must have read of Onesimus who, being made
regenerate by Paul in prison,2523
from a slave
became a deacon. Then he throws out that the slave in question was a
common informer; and, lest he should be compelled to prove the charge,
declares he has it from hearsay only! Why, if I had chosen to repeat the talk of the crowd
and to listen to scandal-mongers, he would have learned before now that
I too know what all the world knows and have heard the same stories as
other people. He declares farther that ordination has been given to
this slave as a reward for a slander spread abroad by him. Does not
such cunning and subtlety appal one? And is there any answer to
eloquence so overwhelming? Which is best, to spread a calumny or to
suffer from one? To accuse a man whose love you may afterwards wish
for, or to pardon a sinner? And is it more tolerable that a common
informer should be made a consul than that he should be made an
ædile?2524
| 2524 The highest and
lowest offices in the Roman magistracy. Jerome insinuates that if the
ordained slave was a common informer so also was John of Jerusalem. | He knows what I pass over in
silence and what I say; what I myself have heard and what—from
the fear of Christ—I perhaps refuse to believe.
7. He charges me with having translated Origen into
Latin. In this I do not stand alone for the confessor Hilary has done
the same, and we are both at one in this that while we have rendered
all that is useful, we have cut away all that was harmful. Let him read
our versions for himself, if he knows how (and as he constantly
converses and daily associates with Italians,2525
I think he cannot be ignorant of Latin); or else, if he cannot quite
take it in, let him use his interpreters and then he will come to know
that I deserve nothing but praise for the work on which he grounds a
charge against me. For, while I have always allowed to Origen his great
merit as an interpreter and critic of the scriptures, I have invariably
denied the truth of his doctrines. Is it I then that let him loose upon
the crowd? Is it I that act sponsor to other preachers like him? No,
for I know that a difference must be made between the apostles and all
other preachers. The former always speak the truth; but the latter
being men sometimes go astray. It would be a strange defence of Origen
surely to admit his faults and then to excuse them by saying that other
men have been guilty of similar ones! As if, when you cannot venture to
defend a man openly, you may hope to shield him by imputing his mistake
to a number of others! As for the six thousand volumes of Origen of
which he speaks, it is impossible that any one should have read books
which have never been written: and I for my part find it easier to
suppose that this falsehood is due to the man who professes to have
heard it rather than to him who is said to have told it.2526
| 2526 The statement that
he had read 6000 volumes of Origen was attributed to Epiphanius by
Rufinus and John of Jerusalem. Cf. Apol. c. Ruf. ii. c. 13. |
8. Again he avers that my brother2527
| 2527 Paulinian, who had
been ordained by Epiphanius. | is the cause of the disagreement which
has arisen, a man who is content to stay in a monastic cell and who
regards the clerical office as onerous rather than honourable. And
although up to this very day he has spoon-fed us with insincere
protestations of peace, he has caused commotion in the minds of the
western bishops2528
| 2528 Sacerdotes; lit.
‘sacrificing priests.’ | by telling
them that a mere youth, hardly more than a boy, has been ordained2529
| 2529 Not by himself but
by Epiphanius. | presbyter of Bethlehem in his own
diocese. If this is the truth, all the bishops of Palestine must be
aware of it. For the monastery of the reverend pope
Epiphanius—called the old monastery—where my brother was
ordained presbyter is situated in the district of Eleutheropolis2530
| 2530 Otherwise Lydda, a
town in the south of Judah at this time the seat of a bishopric. | and not in that of Ælia.2531
| 2531 Ælia
Capitolina was the name given by Hadrian to the colony established by
him on the site of Jerusalem. | Furthermore his age is well known to your
Holiness; and as he has now attained to thirty years I apprehend that
no blame can attach to him on that score. Indeed this particular age is
stamped as full and complete by the mystery of Christ’s assumed
manhood. Let him call to mind the ancient law, and he will see that
after his twenty-fifth year a Levite might be chosen to the
priesthood;2532
| 2532 Nu. iv. 3, LXX. A.V. follows the Hebrew. | or if in this passage he prefers
to follow the Hebrew he will find that candidates for the priesthood
must be thirty years old. And that he may not venture to say that
“old things are passed away; and, behold, all things are become
new,”2533
let him hear the apostle’s
words to Timothy, “Let no man despise thy youth.”2534
Certainly when my opponent was himself
ordained bishop, he was not much older than my brother is now. And if
he argues that youth is no hindrance to a bishop but that it is to a
presbyter because a young elder2535
| 2535 The word
‘presbyter’ means elder. | is a
contradiction in terms, I ask him this question: Why has he himself
ordained a presbyter of this age or younger still, and that too to
minister in another man’s church? But if he cannot be at peace
with my brother unless he consents to submit and to renounce the bishop
who has ordained him, he shews plainly that his object is not peace but
revenge, and that he will not rest satisfied with the quietude of
repose and peace unless he is able to inflict to the full every penalty
that he now threatens. Had he himself ordained my brother, it would
have made no difference to this latter. So dearly does he love
seclusion that he would even then have continued to live quietly and would not have exercised his
office. And should the bishop have seen fit to rend the church on that
score, he would then have owed him nothing save the respect which is
due to all who offer sacrifice.2536
| 2536 Here as frequently
in Jerome the word ‘sacerdos’ is used to denote a
bishop. |
9. So much for his prolix defence of himself or I should
rather say his attack on me. In this letter I have only answered him
briefly and cursorily that from what I have said he may perceive what I
do not say, and may know that as I am a human being I am a rational
animal and well able to understand his shrewdness, and that I am not so
obtuse or brutish as to catch only the sound of his words and not their
meaning. I now ask of you to pardon my chagrin and to allow that if it
is arrogant to answer back, it is yet more arrogant to bring baseless
charges. Yet my answer has indicated what I might have said rather than
has actually said it. Why do men look for peace at a distance? and why
do they wish to have it enforced by word of command? Let them shew
themselves peacemakers, and peace will follow at once. Why do they use
the name of your holiness to terrorize us, when your
letter—strange contrast to their harsh and menacing
words—breathes only peace and meekness? For that the letter which
Isidore the presbyter has brought for me from you does make for peace
and harmony I know by this, that these insincere professors of a wish
for peace have refused to deliver it to me. Let them choose whichever
alternative they please. Either I am a good man or I am a bad one. If I
am a good one let them leave me in quiet: if I am a bad one, why do
they desire to be in bad company? Surely my opponent has learnt by
experience the value of humility. He who now tears asunder things
which, formerly separate, he of his own will put together, proves that
in severing now what he then joined, he is acting at the instigation of
another.2537
| 2537 Probably Isidore,
who had taken a view hostile to Jerome, and who at this time fell under
the displeasure of Theophilus. |
10. Recently he sought and obtained a decree of exile
against me, and I only wish that he had been able to carry it out,2538
| 2538 The execution of
the decree was stopped by the sudden death of the imperial minister
Rufinus. | so that, as the will is imputed to him
for the deed, so I too not in will only but in deed might wear the
crown of exile. The church of Christ has been founded by shedding its
own blood not that of others, by enduring outrage not by inflicting it.
Persecutions have made it grow; martyrdoms have crowned it. Or if the
Christians among whom I live are unique in their love of severity and
know only how to persecute and not how to undergo persecution, there
are Jews here, there are heretics professing various false doctrines,
and in particular the foulest of all, I mean, Manichæism. Why is
it that they do not venture to say a word against them? Why am I the
only person they wish to drive into exile? Am I who communicate with
the church the only person of whom it can be said that he rends the
church? I put it to you, is it not a fair demand either that they
should expel these others as well as myself, or that, if they keep
them, they should keep me too? All the same they honour men by sending
them into exile, for by so doing they separate them from the company of
heretics. It is a monk,2539
shame to say,
who menaces monks and obtains decrees of exile against them; and that
too a monk who boasts that he holds an apostolic chair. But the
monastic tribe does not succumb to terrorism: it prefers to expose its
neck to the impending sword rather than to allow its hands to be tied.
Is not every monk an exile from his country? Is he not an exile from
the whole world? Where is the need for the public authority, the cost
of a rescript, the journeyings up and down the earth to obtain one? Let
him but touch me with his little finger, and I will go into exile of
myself. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness
thereof.”2540
Christ is not shut
up in any one spot.
11. Moreover when he writes that, though I seem to be
separated from communion with him, I in reality hold communion with him
through you and through the church of Rome: he need not go so far
afield, for I am connected with him in the same way also here in
Palestine. And lest even this should appear distant, in this village of
Bethlehem I hold communion with his presbyters as much as I can. Thus
it is clear that a private chagrin is not to be taken for the cause of
the church, and that one man’s choler, or even that of several
stirred up by him, ought not to be styled the displeasure of the
church. Accordingly I now repeat what I said at the beginning of my
letter that I for my part am desirous of Christ’s peace, that I
pray for harmony, and that I request you to admonish him not to exact
peace but to purpose it. Let him be satisfied with the pain which he
has caused by the insults that he has inflicted upon me in the past.
Let him efface old wounds by a little new charity. Let him shew himself
what he was before, when of his own choice he bestowed upon me his
esteem. Let his words no longer be tinged with a gall that flows from
the heart of another. Let him do what he wishes himself, and not what
others force him to wish. Either as
a pontiff, let him exercise authority over all alike, or as a follower
of the apostle, let him serve all for the salvation of all.2541
If he will shew himself such, I am ready
freely to yield and to hold out my arms; he will find me a friend and a
kinsman, and will perceive that in Christ I am submissive to him as to
all the saints. “Charity,” writes the apostle,
“suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not;…is not
puffed up…beareth all things, believeth all things.”2542
Charity is the mother of all virtues, and
the apostle’s words about faith, hope and charity2543
are like that threefold cord which is
not quickly broken.2544
We believe, we
hope, and through our faith and hope we are joined together in the bond
of charity.2545
It is for these virtues that I and
others have left our homes, it is for these that we would live
peaceably without any contention in the fields and alone; paying all
due veneration to Christ’s pontiffs—so long as they preach
the right faith—not because we fear them as lords but because we
honour them as fathers deferring also to bishops as bishops, but
refusing to serve under compulsion, beneath the shadow of episcopal
authority, men whom we do not choose to obey. I am not so much puffed
up in mind as not to know what is due to the priests of Christ. For he
who receives them, receives not them but Him, whose bishops they are.2546
But let them be content with the honour
which is theirs. Let them know that they are fathers and not lords,
especially in relation to those who scorn the ambitions of the world
and count peace and repose the best of all things. And may Christ who
is Almighty God grant to your prayers that I and my opponent may be
united not in a feigned and hollow peace but in true and sincere mutual
esteem, lest biting and devouring one another we be consumed one of
another.2547
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