took priest's orders at Antioch, being strongly urged to it by Paulinus, it was with the express stipulation that he should have no cure of souls imposed on him, but be left to solitude and study and penance. Beyond the rank of priest he never advanced: it is one of the curious anachronisms of the Italian painters, that they sometimes represent him with the scarlet robes and tasselled hat of a cardinal-a dignity and costume not known in the Roman Church till a much later age. He had been called from his retreat to Antioch by the disputes in the church in that city, and he left it to go to Constantinople. His residence of three years in that capital of Greek learning had a most important influence upon his future labours. Hitherto it should seem as if his knowledge of Greek had been limited, and his study of the Scriptures more mystical than philological. To Gregory of Nazianzus, Patriarch of Constantinople, whom he calls his preceptor, "virum valde eloquentem et in scripturis apprime eruditum," he appears to have been indebted for sound instruction in sacred criticism.* From Constantinople he probably went (the chronology of his life is not easily fixed) to Rome, where Pope Damasus made him his confidential secretary, and where the fame of his learning, eloquence and orthodoxy, drew to him the admiration of some wealthy ladies, who afterwards followed him to Palestine. His intimacy with them brought upon him some unfounded suspicions; and on the death of Damasus he withdrew from Rome, accompanied by a considerable body of monks, visiting Cyprus, Alexandria, and the monks of the Nitrian Desert, on his way to Palestine. At his return to Syria he established himself at Bethlehem. He had before been an eremite; he now became a cœnobite, forming there a monastic establishment, to which an inn (diversorium) was added, that the pilgrims who flocked from all parts might not find themselves in the condition of Joseph and Mary when they entered Bethlehem. Jerome's whole property appears to have consisted in his library, which he had carried with him in his various removals; and finding himself, as he says, in danger of being in the condition of the man in the parable, who began to build Ad Esaiam, cap. 6. From a passage in Jerome's Epistle to Nepotianus, it seems that the oάßßarov devтερолрйтоv (Luke vi. 1) was as great a puzzle to theologians as it still remains. Gregory evaded his question about its meaning. without counting the cost, he sent his brother to Pannonia, to collect what was left of his patrimony, wasted by the invasion of the Goths. Monks and pilgrims were not the only persons who claimed the hospitality of Bethlehem ; every day saw men and women of noble birth and once wealthy, arrive, stripped of everything by the barbarians who had ravaged Italy and sacked Rome. In this latter portion of Jerome's life, his most important biblical works were executed, and it would have been well had he confined himself to them. But he could not rest while there was a heresy to be refuted; his controversial style was one of concentrated bitterness, and he spared no harshness of imputation against his antagonists. The Pelagians threatening him with personal violence, he was compelled for some time to leave his convent. The keen blade at length wore through the scabbard, though the energetic spirit struggled manfully against the infirmities of the body. His death took place on Sept. 30, A.D. 420. He had been reduced to such weakness that he had to raise himself to join in prayer by means of a rope fixed to the beam of his cell. His remains were buried at Bethlehem, but (we are told) were conveyed to Rome along with the manger-cradle (presepio), the procession with which, at Santa Maria Maggiore, on Christmaseve, is well known to sight-seers in that metropolis. If we may believe the legend, even after death he continued to bear his testimony against heresy. The doctrine of purgatory was called in question, and Jerome, appearing to his disciple Eusebius, desired him to bring three bodies of men who had lately died to the cave of Bethlehem, and lay them on the sackcloth in which the saint had been clothed. The unbelievers were invited to be present. Eusebius prayed that, through the merits and intercession of Jerome, the souls of the dead men might re-enter their bodies and relate their experience of the other world. The prayer was granted. The men revived, and told the spectators that Jerome had conducted them through paradise, purgatory and hell.t Besides the suppression of heresies, which are said to have vanished before him, like mists before the sun, two subjects engaged Jerome's most strenuous exertions—the * Vita S. Hieronymi, appended to his works. Epist. Cyrilli Episcopi Hiersolymitani ad Augustinum. elucidation of Scripture, including its geography, and the recommendation of the monastic life and of female celibacy. On this latter subject in particular his eloquence is inexhaustible. Perhaps the contempt which he shews for the conjugal life and its domestic duties may receive some explanation from his own early history. The premature exhaustion of the springs of natural affection dries and hardens the heart, and excessive rigour is the reaction of excessive indulgence. Some of his longest and most earnest letters, extending indeed into treatises, are designed to dissuade maidens from matrimony or widows from a second marriage. His favourite Canticle might have taught him to take a more indulgent view of youthful loves; but the bridegroom of the Canticle was to him Christ, and the bride the Church. The topic insisted upon in every modern address to a female votary about to take the veil, that she is to be the spouse of Christ, is a favourite one with Jerome. "Art thou indignant," he says to a mother, whose daughter he supposes to have been persuaded to live a life of virginity, that she has chosen to be the wife of a King rather than of a soldier? She has done you a great kindness. You have begun to be the mother-in-law of God." To another he says, "Your father will grieve that you have no children; Christ will rejoice. You do not belong to him to whom you were born, but to him by whom you were regenerated." The tenderest earthly affections are only hindrances to the love of Christ. Paula is praised for turning a deaf ear to the entreaties of her daughter that she would remain with her till her marriage.+ "She knew not that she was a mother, that she might prove herself a handmaid of Christ." "Sancta Melania, a truly noble Christian woman (with whom may the Lord grant that at the day of his coming you and I may have our part), lost two sons at once, while the body of her husband was yet warm and unburied. What I am about to say is incredible; yet before Christ I lie not. Who would not suppose that, like one distracted, she would lacerate her bosom, dishevel her hair and rend her garments? Not a tear fell; she stood unmoved, and throwing herself at the feet of Christ, * Ad Eustochium de servandâ virginitate. she smiled as if she held him in her arms. 'I shall serve thee with less incumbrance, Lord,' she said, 'since thou hast freed me from so great a burthen.' Marriage he admits as a necessary evil;† but it is a mark of the Fall, a part of the curse which was laid upon the earth for man's disobedience. Coelibes are so called "quia cœlo digni sunt." (Adv. Jovin. lib. ii.) His cautions respecting those maidens whom he wished to preserve from the snare of matrimony afford us some curious insights into the manners of the age. Paula had destined her granddaughter Paula to a convent, and Jerome addressed to her widowed mother Læta a long epistle respecting her education. To the precepts for her elementary instruction, which are little more than a copy of Quintilian, the injunction is added, that she should be taught to repeat the names of all the prophets and apostles, and the entire series of the patriarchs from Adam downwards, according to the genealogies in Matthew and Luke. As she grows up, "beware of piercing her ears; paint not with ceruse and rouge the cheeks that are destined for Christ; encircle not her neck with jewels and pearls; dye not her hair red and thus prepare the way for the flames of hell." And he enforces his warning by a terrific story of a wife who, in obedience to her husband's wish, bent on defeating her purpose of devoting her daughter to a virgin life, had made her curl her hair and dress after the manner of the world. The following night an angel appeared in a dream to the mother, and in a threatening voice said, "Hast thou dared to prefer the command of thy husband to that of Christ, and with thy sacrilegious hands touch the head of a virgin of God? Those hands shall wither from this moment, and at the end of the fifth month thou shalt be conducted to hell." All this St. Jerome assures us (and who shall doubt his word?) came true. She was * Super obitu Blæ sillæ. +"Laudo nuptias," he says; but it is evidently in the depreciatory sense of Virgil's "Laudato ingentia rura, exiguum colito." In his apology to Pammachius, he says, "Virginity is gold; matrimony, silver." Face-painting is a frequent subject of Jerome's invective, but the Roman ladies lacked the art of face-enamelling, and if they allowed themselves unawares to shed tears, they made furrows in the gypsum. (Ad Marcellam.) The Roman matrons were not more willing than those of modern days to grow old. Jerome ridicules their attempt, by dress and false hair, to pass for timid maidens (trementes virguncule) in the presence of their granddaughters. penitent, but her penitence was too late, and both her husband and her sons died. Paula was not to eat with her mother and grandfather, lest she should desire their food; while a child she might drink a little wine for her stomach's sake and use the bath, but after that age both were to be strictly forbidden. Of music she was to be kept in utter ignorance; she was not even to know what organs or pipes, the lyre or the cithara, were made for. In regard to her religious education he directs that her copy of the Scriptures should be correct and legible, but not gay with gold and pictures. She was to begin with the Psalms; to learn wisdom from the Proverbs of Solomon; from Ecclesiastes, to trample on the vanities of the world; from Job, patience. From these she was to pass to the Gospels, the Acts and the Epistles; then, returning to the Old Testament, to commit to memory (not verbally, we presume) the Prophets, the Heptateuch (the Pentateuch with Judges and Joshua), Kings (including Samuel) and Chronicles, Ezra and Esther. Last of all she might take in hand the Song of Songs, being by this time prepared not to mistake its spiritual meaning. The Apocrypha she was carefully to avoid, at least as a source of doctrine. In the midst of the distractions and temptations of Rome, he acknowledged that it would be difficult to carry out such a scheme of life. Among the dangers of the place he reckons, in another epistle on the same subject, the idle members of his own profession, of whom he draws a picture which may find its modern antitype. "There are some of my order who desire the priesthood and the diaconate, that they may see women with greater freedom. All their care is that their garments may be well perfumed and their shoes fit neatly; their hair is curled with the curling iron, their fingers sparkle with rings, they walk on Jerome pushes his dislike of luxury, as his wont is, to an absurd extreme. He praises Paula for knitting her brow when she saw a girl rather elegantly dressed (comptiorem) and saying, "Munditiam corporis atque vestitus animæ esse immunditiam," "the purity of the body and dress is the impurity of the soul" (i. 233). +He elsewhere inveighs against luxury in MSS. of the Bible. "Parchments are stained with purple, gold is melted down for letters, MSS. are clothed in jewels, while Christ lies naked before the door." The Codex Argenteus of Upsala has silver letters on purple parchment. The MS. of the Gospels which belonged to Charles the Bold, and which is or was at Ratisbon, was written in golden letters, bound in gold, and set with pearls and precious stones. Ad Eustochium. |