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| Paula and Eustochium to Marcella.
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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,937
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.938
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 confusion940
and its rehoboth941
or broad places; to leave also the plain of
Shinar, where the tower of pride had been raised to heaven.942
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,943
and
Chebar’s flood, whence Ezekiel was carried to Jerusalem by the
hair of his head.944
All this Abraham
undergoes that he may dwell in a land of promise watered from above,
and not like Egypt, from below,945
no producer of
herbs for the weak and ailing,946
but a land that
looks for the early and the latter rain from heaven.947
It is a land of hills and valleys,948
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.949
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,950
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.951
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.952
| 952 1 Chron. xxi. 15, 18; 2 Chron. iii. 1. | Thus early was it made plain that
Christ’s church would grow up, not in Israel, but among the
Gentiles. Turn back to Genesis,953
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.954
| 954 Mysterium christianum
in salvatoris sanguine et corpore dedicavit. |
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,956
because the skull of the primitive man was buried there. So it came to
pass that the second Adam, that is the blood957
| 957 One of Jerome’s
fanciful ideas. Haddam סרה is the Hebrew for “the
blood.” | of
Christ, as it dropped from the cross, washed away the sins of the
buried protoplast,958
| 958 ὁ πρωτόπλαστος
= “the first-formed.” The word is applied to Adam in Wisd. vii. 1. | 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 after we have been trodden down that we are lifted
up to see the vision of peace. Because of this peace Solomon,961
| 961 Hebrew,
Shelomoh, connected with shalem, peace. | 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.963
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;965
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, asserts966
| 966 Bellum Judaicum, vi.
5. | 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.967
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 importance970
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,971
and He would not have done so if He did
not love it. He wept for Lazarus because He loved him.972
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
manna, Aaron’s rod, and the golden altar.973
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.974
Long before this
sepulchre was hewn out by Joseph,975
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
son981
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 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 Zeboim983
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,984
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”?988
We must not
interpret this passage straight off, as many people989
| 989 E.g. Origen
in his commentary on the passage. | 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.992
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
place has, since the Lord’s passion, become an abomination, why
was Paul in such haste to reach Jerusalem to keep Pentecost in it?993
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 orator995
| 995 Cicero of
Cæcilius (in Q. Cæc. xii.). | 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,996
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.999
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.1001
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.1002
With what expressions and what language can
we set before 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 rock1003
| 1003 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. | 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.1004
| 1004 Bible:Rev.18">Rev. xvii. 4, 5, 9; i. 15; xvii;
xviii. | “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 cave, and
together weep in the sepulchre of the Lord with His sister and with His
mother?1008
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.1009
We shall see
Lazarus come forth bound with grave clothes,1010
we
shall look upon the waters of Jordan purified for the washing of the
Lord.1011
Thence we shall pass to the folds of the
shepherds,1012
we shall pray together in the
mausoleum of David.1013
We shall see the
prophet, Amos,1014
| 1014 “Who was among
the herdsmen of Tekoa”—Am. i. 1. | 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.1015
We shall see the
fountain in which the eunuch was immersed by Philip.1016
We shall make a pilgrimage to Samaria, and
side by side venerate the ashes of John the Baptist, of Elisha,1017
and of Obadiah. We shall enter the very
caves where in the time of persecution and famine the companies of the
prophets were fed.1018
If only you will
come, we shall go to see Nazareth, as its name denotes, the flower1019
of Galilee. Not far off Cana will be
visible, where the water was turned into wine.1020
We
shall make our way to Tabor,1021
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,1022
and the four thousand with seven.1023
The town of Nain will meet our eyes, at
the gate of which the widow’s son was raised to life.1024
Hermon too will be visible, and the torrent
of Endor, at which Sisera was vanquished.1025
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
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