SOURCE: "O Tempora! O Mores!" in St. Jerome as a Satirist: A Study in Christian Latin Thought and Letters, Cornell University Press, 1964, pp. 20-64.

[In the following excerpt, Wiesen discusses Jerome's writings as commentaries on the state of his contemporaries. According to Wiesen, "St. Jerome's sense of the decline of civilization and his disgust with the vices of 'the world' form an important theme in all categories of his writings, from the letters written in the desert of Chalcis when he was a young man to his late exegetical and homiletic works. "]

It is a commonplace for satirists to castigate the age in which they live, to compare contemporary society unfavorably with the past, and to declare that the vices which they lampoon are peculiar to their own time. In his first satire Juvenal expatiates on the question, Et quando uberior vitiorum copia?¹ The satirist goes as far as to say in his thirteenth satire:

Nona aetas agitur peioraque saecula ferri
temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
nomen et a nullo posuit natura metallo.²

Persius expresses his weariness with the empty life of his day in a line which Jerome twice quotes:

O curas hominum, o quantum est in rebus inane!3

Seneca contrasts the decadent luxury of his own age with the manly simplicity of Scipio's time. At the beginning of his satiric description of Roman bathing habits he tells us, Magna ergo me voluptas subiit contemplantem mores Scipionis et nostros.⁴ Arnmianus Marcellinus too takes the time of Scipio as the high point of human morality as he contrasts the swollen hypocrisy of Roman social life in his own day.⁵ Ammianus suggests that the vices of the nobility, which he describes in great detail, are peculiar to his own age.⁶ Of course, the contrast between the evils of a modern age and the purity of a time long past was also popular as a locus communis in the schools of declamation throughout the imperial period.⁷

The same deprecation of the age in which he lived and the same unfavorable view of its morality in contrast to the past are found in St. Jerome's writings. The attitude of a fourth-century Christian moralist to contemporary society was of necessity somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand there was considerable reason for optimism. The swift progress made by the forces of Christianity in the latter part of the fourth century was unmistakable. Writing about the year 400, St. Jerome declares, probably with some exaggeration, "The gilded Capitoline is filthy, all the temples of Rome are covered with soot and cobwebs … and a flood of people runs past the half-ruined shrines to the tombs of the martyrs."⁸ About the same time Jerome addressed a letter to two Goths, Sunnia and Fretela, who had asked him for guidance through the textual difficulties of the Psalms. Jerome begins his letter with some highly optimistic remarks on the condition of society:

Dudum callosa tenendo capulo manus, et digiti tractandis sagittis aptiores, ad stilum calamumque mollescunt; et bellicosa pectora vertuntur in mansuetudinem christianam. Nunc et Esaiae vaticinium cernimus opere completum: "Concident gladios suos in aratra, et lanceas suas in falces; et non adsumet gens contra gentem gladium, et non discent ultra pugnare.⁹

In spite of the obvious attempt at flattery, these words do at least show that Jerome's view of society and morals was sometimes favorable and approving. Yet such expressions of optimism are rare. Jerome saw more clearly than most of his contemporaries that he lived in the twilight of Greco-Roman civilization and that night could not be long delayed. In his commentary on Daniel, he clearly states that the military weakness of the Empire revealed that the end of Roman hegemony had arrived.¹⁰ In his sixtieth letter Jerome recounts the tragic history of the emperors from Constantius to the usurper Eugenius and, after describing the chaos caused by the barbarian invasions, adds: Romanus orbis ruit et tamen cervix nostra erecta non flectitur."¹¹ Thirteen years later, in 409, learning that Alaric and his Gothic host were approaching the walls of Rome, Jerome was filled with just and gloomy apprehension. O lugenda res publica, he exclaims, as he describes in detail the lands of the Empire lost to the barbarians. Then, citing Lucan, Jerome declares: Potentiam Romanae urbis ardens poeta describens ait: quid satis est, si Roma parum est? Quod nos alio mutemus elogio: quid salvum est, si Roma perit?¹²

We see then that in spite of several expressions of optimism on the improvement of society effected by the advance of Christianity, St. Jerome was thrown into deep gloom by the political events of his day. Yet his real dissatisfaction with the world in which he lived was not the result of political affairs but sprang rather from his disapproval of the moral state of society. Jerome could not fail to observe that Christianity's external victories had not wrought any significant reform of social mores. Indeed, he directly attributes the distracted state of the Empire to the wickedness of the age. In his description of the barbarian incursions he exclaims, "Through our sins are the barbarians strong, through our vices is the Roman army defeated."¹³ Let us now follow chronologically, through each category of Jerome's writings, his satiric expression of disgust with the condition of his age.

Letters

Many of the letters written during Jerome's second sojourn in Rome (382-385) contain satiric references to the faults of contemporary society. In his thirty-third letter Jerome draws up catalogues of the enormous scholarly output of Varro and of Origen the Adamantine.¹⁴ These catalogues reveal, says Jerome, that we in our own day are sleeping the sleep of Epimenides and that the labor expended by Varro and Origen on literature we use in gathering riches.¹⁵ To be sure we too have learned men in our day:

Sciuntque pisces in quo gurgite nati sint, quae concha in quo litore creverit. De turdorum salivis non ambigimus. Paxamus et Apicius semper in manibus; oculi ad hereditates, sensus ad patinas, et si quis de philosophis, vel de Christianis qui vere philosophi sunt, trito pallio et sordida tunica lectioni vacaverit, quasi vesanus exploditur.¹⁶

In this passage Jerome suggests that excessive interest in food was a vice peculiar to his own age. And yet gluttony had always been grist to the satirist's mill. Lucilius, Varro, Horace, Persius, Petronius, and Juvenal had ridiculed the Roman passion for delicacies of the table.¹⁷ Among later writers Tertullian comments satirically on the refined voracity of the Romans, and Ammianus Marcellinus describes the host at a banquet calling for scales to weigh the fish, fowl, and dor-mice.¹⁸ In satirizing the corruption of Rome, Ammianus mentions only by praeteritio the "abyss of dinner-table luxury and the varying ways of arousing pleasure," since the full exposition of these topics would be excessively long.¹⁹ Subsequently in a tone very much like that of Jerome, Ammianus ridicules supposedly educated contemporaries for their greater interest in food than in books: "And if in the circle of the learned the name of an ancient author is dropped, they think it is a foreign name for a fish or a canape."²⁰

Thus in attacking the gluttony of his age Jerome is working well within the satiric tradition. Even the diction of his remarks shows the influence of pagan satire. We may compare Jerome's words, de turdorum salivis non ambigimus, with Persius' expression, turdarum nosse salivas.²¹ Moreover, the sense of the ridicule of gluttony cited above has a close parallel in Juvenal:

Nulli maior fuit usus edendi
tempestate mea: Circeis nata forent an
Lucrinum ad saxum Rutupinove edita fundo
ostrea callebat primo deprendere morsu,
et semel aspecti litus dicebat echini.²²

Furthermore in mentioning Apicius, Jerome recalls a standard pagan prototype of gluttony. Juvenal uses Apicius as a symbol of voracity twice and Martial three times.²³

Jerome touches briefly in this passage upon another fault which he considers characteristic of his age, the longing for legacies. So conspicuous is legacy hunting in the picture of society drawn by the classical satirists that one might perhaps suspect that Jerome, in his desire to attack his age,. hits upon a failing which was no longer common but which he had learned of from his reading.²⁴ Yet the testimony of Ammianus Marcellinus shows that legacy hunting was still a widespread practice in the Roman society of the fourth century.²⁵ The edict of the emperor Valentinian in 370 which prohibited legacy hunting among ecclesiastics shows how common this fault was among the clergy.²⁶ Indeed, St. Jerome himself has been accused of legacy hunting as a result of his numerous invitations to wealthy Romans to join him in Bethlehem.²⁷

Jerome concludes his letter by comparing the men of contemporary Rome to Aristippus and Epicurus, that is, lovers of luxury and sloth.²⁸" This theme of the worldliness and sensuality of Babylon, as Jerome calls Rome, is ubiquitous in his letters of the years 382-385.²⁹ Writing to the wealthy and noble Marcella in 384, Jerome describes Rome as "[a city] of pomp, of lewdness, of pleasures, a city in which to be humble is to be wretched."³⁰ The Christian poet Prudentius, a contemporary of St. Jerome, agrees with him. He envisages Luxuria, who pervigilem ructabat marcida cenam, arising on the western bounds of the world.³¹ This has been interpreted to mean that Rome is regarded as the original home of sensuality.³²

The luxury and materialism of the city stifle the life of the spirit, says Jerome. In his forty-third letter he again contrasts the learned diligence of the great Origen with the typical scholar of his own day. If the latter reads for as much as two hours, he yawns, rubs his face with his hand, tries to restrain his desire for food, and after so much intellectual labor returns to worldly occupations.³³ This brief caricature is but the beginning of an attack on the life of Babylon. Gluttony is briefly touched upon: Praetermitto prandia, quibus onerata mens premitur, says Jerome. Social life, he claims, consists of an endless round of meaningless visits dominated by malicious gossip: Deinceps itur in verba … vita aliena describitur et mordentes invicem consumimur ab invicem.³⁴ In this sentence the master of the biting insult inveighs against the art at which he was so adept. He then touches lightly upon the luxuriousness of clothing and passes to a satiric picture of the businessman:

Ubicumque conpendium est, velocior pes, citus sermo, auris adtentior; si damnum, ut saepe in re familiari accidere solet, fuerit nuntiatum, vultus maerore deprimitur. Laetamur ad nummum, obolo contristamur.³⁵

Jerome proceeds to compare the changing countenance of a businessman with the masks of an actor who plays now Hercules, now Venus. In his careful construction of this passage, Jerome is trying to achieve the greatest possible vividness. He chooses three details to highlight, pes, sermo, and auris, using these as the subjects of brief successive clauses. With these three quick strokes he immediately draws the sarcastic picture of greedy profit seekers. The asyndeton of the three clauses and the omission of the verbs also aim at swiftness.³⁶ Satiric contrast is achieved by chiasmus: Laetamur ad nummum, obolo contristamur.

Jerome concludes with a general statement of disgust with the worldliness of Rome: Habeat sibi Roma suos tumultus, harena saeviat, circus insaniat, theatra luxurient et, quia de nostris dicendum est, matronarum cotidie visitetur senatus.³⁷ The passage demonstrates that Jerome did not hesitate to castigate faults of which he himself was guilty. In speaking of nostri who visit matronarum senatus, he is presumably referring to those clergymen who were closely attached to noble patronesses, a type of ecclesiastic whom Jerome bitterly satirizes as foppish and hypocritical in his twenty-second letter.³⁸ Yet it must be remembered that Jerome's entire life at Rome revolved around aristocratic and pious ladies such as Marcella, her mother Albina, her companion Asella, and, of course, the famous Paula, who was to be the closest friend and support of Jerome's later life. It is just such a matronarum senatus which Jerome in this letter dismisses as one of the most unpleasant aspects of the worldly life of Babylon. The remark seems to be in particularly poor taste in a letter addressed to the very Marcella who was the center of Jerome's social circle.

Jerome's tone of disgust with the tumult of Rome, its arena, circus, and theater closely resembles in spirit those passages of Horace and Juvenal in which the satirists reject the inconvenience and confusion of Rome in favor of the peace of the countryside.³⁹ The resemblance is heightened when Jerome juxtaposes to his caustic portrayal of Rome an idyllic description of country life with its cheap and simple diet, its leaves and flowers, and its chirping birds.

Quam primum licet quasi quendam portum secreta ruris intremus. Ibi cibarius panis et holus nostris manibus inrigatum, lac, deliciae rusticanae, viles quidem sed innocentes cibos praebeant… Si aestas est, secretum arboris umbra praebebit; si autumnus ipsa aeris temperies et strata subter folia locum quietis ostendit. Vere ager floribus depingitur, et inter querulas aves psalmi dulcius decantabuntur.⁴⁰

Yet this description decidedly lacks the odor of reality. It appears to be rather a rhetorical exercise in drawing the traditional contrast between the city and country life. We know from Quintilian that the question Rusticane vita an urbana potior? was a standard rhetorical thesis.⁴¹ Surely when a monk who is an ascetic zealot and a secretary to the pope suggests to a noble Roman widow, secreta ruris intremus, the invitation cannot be seriously meant.

And yet even if the invitation was not meant to be accepted literally, it reflected Jerome's profound and passionate desire for escape from the endless troubles and grief which he had brought upon himself during his stay in Rome. His longing praise of country life is contained in one of the last letters that he wrote before his final departure from the city.⁴²" The death of Jerome's powerful patron, Pope Damasus, on December 11, 384, removed the great dam which had long held back a sea of enmity.⁴³ Jerome's letters reveal his increasingly difficult position. His attacks on the luxury of the city had not been well received. "We who refuse to wear silken garments," complains Jerome, "to get drunk, to part our lips in raucous laughter are called gloomy monks. If our tunic is not gleaming white we are pointed out at the street corner and called 'imposter and Greek."⁴⁴ Jerome concludes this letter with a brief but penetrating sketch of his accusers: Cavillentur vafriora licet, et pingui aqualiculo farsos circumferant homines.⁴⁵ In these words of ridicule the influence of pagan satire is clearly visible. Persius uses the word aqualiculus, which literally signifies "the maw of a pig," to mean "belly." Jerome's phrase pinguis aqualiculus is taken from Persius 1. 57:

Pinguis aqualiculus protenso sesquipede extet.46

Thus Jerome relies upon the Stoic satirist to supply the most striking phrase in his description of the profligate enemies of Christian asceticism.

Jerome's thirty-ninth letter, the epitaphium of Blesilla, clearly reveals how much hostility his ascetic propaganda had aroused. Blesilla, the young daughter of the noble Paula, had been converted to the ascetic life by Jerome. When she died suddenly, her death was attributed to the ascetic rigors imposed upon her by Jerome. At her funeral the hostility of the mob broke forth, as the people murmured, "How long before this detestable class of monks will be driven from the city, crushed with stones, tossed into the waves?"⁴⁷ And yet Jerome's propaganda for reform was only partially responsible for the enmity of the city of Rome toward him. In his parting letter to Rome (No. 45), he catalogues the charges brought against him, "I am infamous, I am tricky and slippery, I am a liar and deceive with satanic art."⁴⁸ It is absolutely clear from this letter that it was Jerome's ambitious and bitter personality which drove him from Rome, the city which, he claimed, had once considered him worthy of the papacy itself.⁴⁹ In this letter, written at the very moment of his departure, Jerome delivers himself of some Parthian shots against the sensuality of the city. Addressing Rome in general he says:

Tibi placet lavare cotidie, alius has munditias sordes putat; tu attagenam ructuas et de comeso acipensere gloriaris, ego faba ventrem inpleo; te delectant cachinnantium greges, Paulam Malaniumque plangentium; tu aliena desideras, illae contemnunt sua; te delibuta melle vina delectant, illae potant aquam frigidam suaviorem; tu te perdere aestimas quidquid in praesenti non hauseris, comederis, devoraris.… Bono tuo crassus sis, me macies delectat et pallor; tu tales miseros arbitraris, nos te miseriorem putamus: Par pari refertur sententia; invicem nobis videmur insani.⁵⁰

In the month of August, 385, when the Etesian winds were blowing, St. Jerome set sail from Rome, never to return.⁵¹ At Cyprus he was joined by Paula and her daughter Eustochium, who had rejected the pleas of their relatives and with great courage and religious fervor abandoned forever the evil life of Babylon. In company with these ladies Jerome made an extensive tour of the Holy Land and Egypt, piously visiting a large number of biblical sites.⁵² Finally in the summer of 386 they settled in Bethlehem with the intention of building two cloisters, one for men under Jerome's direction and a convent for women to be headed by Paula.

Some years after his settlement in the East, Jerome dispatched to Marcella an invitation to join him in Bethlehem.⁵³ This letter purports to have been written by Paula and Eustochium, but it is generally agreed that it came from the hand of Jerome.⁵⁴ In this document Jerome's old hatred for the evils of decadent Rome again blazes forth. The quiet piety of Bethlehem is contrasted to the luxury of the city:

Procul luxuria, procul voluptas.… Ubi sunt latae porticus? ubi aurata laquearia? ubi domus miserorum poenis et damnatorum labore vestitae? ubi ad instar palatii opibus privatorum extructae basilicae, ut vile corpusculum hominis pretiosius inambulet et, quasi mundo quicquam possit esse ornatius, tecta sua magis velit aspicere quam caelum?⁵⁵

This attack on the Roman passion for grandiose buildings recalls a traditional moralistic theme. Seneca attacked luxury in building, using laquearia as a symbol of wanton magnificence.⁵⁶ Juvenal satirized the Roman love of latas porticus.⁵⁷ One might suspect that Jerome's denunciation of building is more a rhetorical commonplace which belongs by tradition in a castigation of urban vices than an honest expression of moral outrage. Indeed, elsewhere in his writings we can see how his denunciation of the passion for building was guided more by tradition than by present reality. As early as 376 Jerome had written from the desert of Chalcis a letter in which he contrasted the piously ascetic life of the desert with Roman luxury. Addressing Heliodorus, a friend of his school days, he says, Et tu amplas porticus et ingentia spatia metaris?⁵⁸ Since Jerome certainly knew that his friend was a monk and hence in no position at all to construct magnificent porticoes, we must assume that he was speaking in a traditional and rhetorical manner. This opinion is strengthened when it is discovered that Jerome's words contain a reminiscence of Horace's praise of old-time frugality (Carmen ii. 15. 15):

               Nulla decempedis
metata privatis opacam
porticus excipiebat Arcton.

We have in fact striking confirmation from Jerome himself of the derivative nature of his critique of city life in the letter to Heliodorus. About twenty years after that letter, he wrote to Heliodorus' nephew Nepotianus, admitting:

Dum essem adulescens, immo paene puer, et primos impetus lascivientis aetatis heremi duritia refrenarem, scripsi ad avunculum tuum sanctum Heliodorum exhor-tatoriam epistulam plenam lacrimis querimoniisque, et quae deserti sodalis monstraret affectum. Sed in illo opere pro aetate tunc lusimus, et calentibus adhuc rhetorum studiis atque doctrinis, quaedam scolastico flore depinximus.⁵⁹

This admission should give us serious pause. If Jerome can describe his censure of urban luxury as rhetorical play, it is probable that other aspects of his satire were heavily influenced by inherited declamatory moralism. We will have to face this problem frequently in the course of this study.

Although Jerome's denunciation of the passion for building is influenced by traditional pagan moralism, his remarks do in fact represent a theme found in other Christian writers of his time [such as John Chrysostom].… We find, then, that the emphasis in pagan moralism on simplicity and frugality is continued in Christianity. It is precisely this continuity of ethical commonplaces which permits St. Jerome to borrow repeatedly from those representatives of pagan moralism with whom he was so well acquainted, the satiric poets.

John Chrysostom confines his attack on the luxury of building to private edifices. It is curious to see how Jerome's repudiation of luxury in building extends even to churches. We find the ardent champion of Christian orthodoxy attacking the magnificent churches built ad instar palatii opibus privatorum.⁶¹ Jerome is fond of contrasting the outward splendor of the contemporary Church with certain inner weaknesses. In his letter of exhortation on the ascetic life addressed to Nepotianus, Jerome writes: Multi aedificant parietes et columnas ecclesiae subtrahunt; marmora nitent, auro splendent lacunaria, gemmis altare distinguitur et ministrorum Christi nulla electio est.⁶² In another letter of exhortation, to Paulinus of Nola, Jerome asks: Quae utilitas parietes fulgere gemmis, et Christum in paupere fame mori?⁶³ Again, in his letter to the nun Demetrias, Jerome satirizes mildly the builders of luxurious churches:

Alii aedificent ecciesias, vestiant parietes marmorum crustis, columnarum moles advehant, earumque deaurent capita pretiosum ornatum non sentientia, ebore argentoque valvas et gemmis aurea vel aurata distinguant altaria—non reprehendo, non abnuo.⁶⁴

Jerome's mocking purpose is shown in his use of the highly ironic phrase capita pretiosum ornatum non sentientia. Grültzmacher, who has in general a very low opinion of Jerome's character and motives, suggests that he had "persönliche Absichten" in his advice to Demetrias. Jerome preferred that Demetrias send money to his own monastery, which at the time of this letter (A.D. 414) was in serious financial difficulty, rather than spend it on showy basilicas.⁶⁵ But Grützmacher's opinion cannot be maintained in view of Jerome's frequently expressed scorn for glorious churches.⁶⁶

Even after he took up permanent settlement in the East, Jerome did not cease to lampoon the failings of his age in general and of the city of Rome in particular. In his invitation to Marcella to join him in the East (Letter 46), Jerome, after comparing Rome to mulier purpurata Babylonis, proceeds to the following satiric description:

Sed ipsa ambitio, potentia, magnitudo urbis, videri et videre, salutari et salutare, laudare et detrahere, audire vel proloqui et tantam frequentiam hominum saltim invitum pati, a proposito monachorum et quiete aliena sunt. Aut enim videmus ad nos venientes et silentium perdimus, aut non videmus et superbiae arguimur. Interdumque, ut visitantibus reddamus vicem, ad superbas fores pergimus et inter linguas rodentium ministrorum postes ingredimur auratos.⁶⁷

This unpleasant description again illustrates a remarkable aspect of Jerome's moralizing: his readiness to attack faults of which he too was guilty. We have already seen this tendency at work in Letters 43 and 44. In the present list of the objectionable aspects of Roman social life Jerome includes backbiting and the linguas rodentium ministrorum, although he specifically claims for himself the right laudare et carpere and was well aware that his own evil tongue was a major cause of his enforced retirement from Rome.⁶⁸

Jerome's tendency to see only the faults of others is exemplified by another letter written in the early years of his settlement in Bethlehem. We have seen that in his forty-third epistle, written while he was still in Rome, Jerome had charged that the age in which he lived was unlettered and unscholarly. His removal to Bethlehem had not changed this view at all. Writing to Paulinus of Nola, Jerome again attacks the ignorance of the day. "Today how many men, imagining that they understand literature, hold in their hands a sealed book which they cannot open, unless He shall unlock it 'who has the key of David, who opens and no man closes, who closes and no man opens."¹⁶⁹ The idealization of an age long past, so common in satire, is implied by the contrast with "today." Jerome then calls upon Horace to reinforce his strictures:

           Quod medicorum est,
promittunt medici, tractant fabrilia fabri.

Sola scripturarum ars est, quam sibi omnes passim vindicent:

Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim.

Hanc garrula anus, hanc delirus senex, hanc soloescista verbosus, hanc universi praesumunt, lacerant, docent, antequam discant.⁷⁰

A mocking description of these pseudo scholars is then given:

Alii adducto supercilio grandia verba trutinantes inter mulierculas de sacris litteris philosophantur, alii discunt—pro pudor!—a feminis quod viros doceant, et, ne parum hoc sit, quadam facilitate verborum, immo audacia disserunt aliis quod ipsi non intellegunt.⁷¹

This portrayal is highly effective, with its detail of the haughtily raised eyebrow of the pompous and ignorant weigher of words. The passage again illustrates Jerome's habit of satirizing faults of which he himself was guilty. What had been his major occupation during his years in Rome if not inter mulierculas de sacris litteris philosophari? He himself admits that at Rome, "a great crowd of maidens frequently surrounded me; to some I explained the divine books, according to my ability."⁷² Jerome was well aware that his relationships with women were the source of considerable scandal.⁷³ His attack in the letter to Paulinus of Nola on those who explain scripture to women reveals the inconsistency in his moralizing which led Eiswirth to declare that, "Hieronymus war ein sehr sensibiler Charakter, der stark von der Augenblickstimmung abhängig war."⁷⁴ In his wish to convert Paulinus of Nola to the life of perfect asceticism Jerome shoots his arrows broadcast at the vices of the age, meanwhile quite unaware that he is hitting some of the faults of which contemporaries thought him guilty.

A much more important and puzzling example of Jerome's inconsistency is discovered when his Letters 46 and 53 are compared with Letter 58. In his invitation to Marcella (Letter 46) Jerome had strongly contrasted the debauchery of Rome with the quiet piety of Bethlehem. In Letter 53 Jerome invites Paulinus to come to Bethlehem in order, like Paul, to sit at the feet of Gamaliel and be armed with spiritual weapons. But suddenly and unexpectedly we find Jerome in another letter (58) urging Paulinus by no means to voyage to the East if he wishes to maintain the ascetic life: Jerusalem had suddenly become the old painted woman of Babylon, as Jerome launches into a satiric attack on the Holy City:

Si crucis et resurrectionis loca non essent in urbe celeberrima, in qua curia, in qua ala militum, in qua scorta, mimi, scurrae et omnia sunt quae solent esse in ceteris urbibus, vel si monachorum solummodo turbis frequentaretur, expetendum revera huiusce modi cunctis monachis esset habitaculum; nunc vero summae stultitiae est renuntiare saeculo, dimittere patriam, urbes deserere, monachum profiteri, et inter maiores populus peregre vivere quam eras victurus in patria. De toto huc orbe concurritur; plena est civitas universi generis hominibus, et tanta utriusque sexus constipatio, ut quod alibi ex parte fugiebas hic totum sustinere cogaris.⁷⁵

The puzzlement aroused among modern scholars by this sudden attack on the life of Jerusalem and its environs and the withdrawal of the invitation to Paulinus was largely the result of a chronological difficulty: which letter was earlier, the invitation in Letter 53 or its withdrawal in Letter 58? In the manuscripts Letter 58 is placed before 53, but Vallarsi reversed the order because of the phrase in principio amicitiarum in Letter 53. 1. On the basis of this reversed order Grützmacher built the theory that Jerome withdrew the invitation when he realized that the strong-minded Paulinus would never be subject to his own direction. Furthermore, Jerome feared, claims Grützmacher, that Paulinus might take sides against him in the incipient quarrel with Bishop John of Jerusalem.⁷⁶ More recent scholarly opinion, however, has restored the original order of the letters, placing the letter now numbered 58 before 53.⁷⁷ Grützmacher's theory, so unfavorable to Jerome's character, is no longer tenable if this order of the two letters is accepted, for now the satiric attack on Jerusalem precedes rather than follows the invitation to Paulinus. The solution to this chronological problem significantly affects our view of Jerome's attacks on the age. Grützmacher's theory implies that Jerome wrote his satiric description of the busy life of Jerusalem solely for personal reasons: to prevent the arrival in the East of a distinguished and strong-minded cleric who might question his own authority. But Cavallera seems right in maintaining that Jerome's invitation to Paulinus is only comprehensible if it was made after an exchange of letters had drawn the two men closer together and after Jerome had become concerned for Paulinus' spiritual well-being.⁷⁸ On this theory the unfavorable picture of Jerusalem would have been painted in Jerome's first letter to Paulinus and thus would have been the free expression of his wrath at the moral delinquencies of the Holy City. It is then reasonable to conclude that Jerome was truly shocked, at Jerusalem as at Rome, by the contrast between an ideal of Christian behavior and the reality of a society nominally Christian but still tainted by many vestiges of pagan immorality. We may then say that, like the satiric pictures of pagan society found in earlier Latin Fathers, Jerome's satire arose from his moral indignation and from his consequent desire to reveal before society the vices which to his mind implied the failure of a Christian ideal.

As the years passed and Jerome's memories of Rome faded, his anger and indignation at that city appear to have cooled. In 397 he wrote a letter to the aristocratic, wealthy Roman senator Pammachius. In this document the former satiric attacks on Rome have been transformed into a paean to the Eternal City as the capital of Christian asceticism. Jerome's satire now refers only to the past. The present merits unqualified praise. Tunc rari sapientes, potentes, nobiles christiani, nunc multi monachi sapientes, potentes, nobiles.⁷⁹ With this sentiment we may compare Letter 33. 3, a passage written about twelve years earlier: At e contrario nostra saecula habent homines eruditos, sciuntque pisces in quo gurgite nati sint. In his later epistle Jerome proceeds to praise the disappearance of luxury from the city:

Ardentes gemmae, quibus ante collum et facies ornabatur, egentium ventres saturant; vestes sericae et aurum in fila lentescens in mollia lanarum vestimenta mutata sunt, quibus repellatur frigus, non quibus nudetur ambitio; deliciarum quondam supellectilem virtus insumit.⁸¹

Only twelve years earlier Jerome had spoken of vestes sericae, nitentes gemmae, picta facies, auri ambitio as characteristic elements in the life of the city."⁸² Now, however, he applies his satire only to failings already corrected. Fores quae prius salutantium turbas vomebant nunc a miseris obsidentur.⁸³ Jerome's earlier views on Roman social life may be compared: Sed ipsa ambitio, potentia, magnitudo urbis, videre et videri, salutari et salutare … a proposito monachorum et quiete aliena sunt.⁸⁴

To what cause may Jerome's reversal of opinion on Rome be attributed? It is difficult to suppose that Jerome suddenly began to think of Rome as the holiest city on earth. A consideration of the nature of the letter in which his new opinion is contained may be helpful. The immensely wealthy senator Pammachius, to whom the letter in question was addressed, had been married to Paulina, the second daughter of Jerome's companion Paula.⁸⁵ Upon Paulina's death in 398, Jerome addressed to Pammachius an epitaphium, which is the letter under consideration. The epitaphium, however, occupies only the beginning of the letter, which quickly becomes a highly exaggerated panegyric of Pammachius. At his wife's death Pammachius had adopted the ascetic life and had dared to enter the senate house in the duncolored garb of a monk.⁸⁶ Jerome was well aware how meaningful was the adherence of a rich and noble senator to the cause of asceticism. The enemies of the monastic movement had been mounting strong attacks.⁸⁷ Jerome had already been forced to reply in his polemical tracts Adversus Helvidium and Adversus Iovinianum. Moreover, the Origenist controversy was currently raging hotly. In both these quarrels Pammachius was a powerful ally in Rome. By flattering Pammachius through excessive praise of the improvements his conversion to asceticism had wrought in the moral life of Rome, Jerome hoped to make him even more favorable to the monastic cause. Hence the glowing portrayal of Rome, for in the description of the city's transformation, Pammachius is glorified as magnus in magnis, primus in primis, monacho monachorum.⁸⁸ The artificiality of the letter is revealed by the turgid rhetoric of its diction: Nobis post dormitionem somnumque Paulinae Pammachium monachum ecclesia peperit postumum, declares Jorome.⁸⁹ This artificiality reaches its height in Jerome's description of a mute mendicant: Alius elinguis et mutus, et ne hoc quidem habens unde roget, magis rogat quia rogare non potest.⁹⁰

Jerome's picture of a Rome transformed, a picture in which satire is used to contrast a decadent past with an improved present cannot be accepted as the true expression of an optimistic view of the morals of the day. The passage of time had probably softened the old anger, and the desire to flatter Pammachius had dictated Jerome's praise of the new Rome. Yet in the very same letter the indignation of earlier years flares up briefly once again. Inconsistently Jerome turns to satirize the profligacy of the city:

Ubi videris fumare patinas et Phasides aves lentis vaporibus discoqui, ubi argenti pondus, ferventes mannos, comatulos pueros, pretiosas vestes, picta tapetia, ubi ditior est largitore cui largiendum est, pars sacrilegii est rem pauperum dare non pauperibus.⁹¹

Jerome's return here to his more usual view of the moral state of Rome strongly supports the theory that he had ulterior motives in praising the city to Pammachius. Again he emphasizes gluttony and luxury, delivering a slap en passant at the wealth of certain worldly clergymen who might be the unworthy recipients of Pammachius' bounty. Jerome's mockery of comptos pueros recalls Juvenal's disdain for dandified slave boys (Sat. II. 149-151) and his preference for servants who have:

               tonsi rectique capilli
atque hodie tantum propter convivia pexi.

His mention above of pheasants (Phasides aves) recalls Juvenal's use of Scythicae volucres, the same bird under another name, as a symbol of overrefined eating habits.⁹² Jerome again uses these traditional "birds of Phasis" as a symbol of gluttony in one of his later letters, and pheasants also appear in one of John Chrysostom's attacks on luxury of the table.…

Jerome now proceeds, with a monk's scorn for the ways of the world, to characterize the eating habits of laymen: Saecularis homo in quadragesima ventris ingluviem decoquit, et in coclearum morem suo victitans suco, futuris dapibus ac saginae aqualiculum parat.⁹⁴ In these few words Jerome demonstrates his use of ridiculing description as a means of ascetic propaganda. His aim is plainly to arouse the disgust of the reader for the behavior of the saecularis homo. Thus his choice of the word ingluvies, which is literally the maw of an animal, to mean gluttony. The word ingluvies is used in the same scornful way by Horace:

Hunc si perconteris, avi cur atque parentis
praeclaram ingrata stringat malus ingluvie
   rem.⁹⁵

Furthermore, Jerome in this passage again uses aqualiculus, as did Persius, with a strongly pejorative meaning, in satiric reference to gluttony.⁹⁶ This description is meant, then, to be a brief but effective expos6 of the sensuality of the worldly life.

Jerome's later letters reveal deepening despair over the state of the world. This despair was in part the result of the catastrophic political events of the first decade of the fifth century. Although a recluse and ascetic, Jerome could hardly avoid a feeling of profound shock and grief at the terrible incursions of the barbarians into the western part of the Empire. Aruerant vetustate lacrimae, he exclaims.⁹⁷ In such times one can hardly hope for more than merely to stay alive: "But in view of the miseries of the time and the savagery of the swords everywhere raging, he is rich enough who is not in need of bread, he is excessively powerful, who is not compelled to be a slave."⁹⁸ Yet the tragic events of those days did not quiet Jerome's enthusiasm for moral reform. On the contrary, they but strengthened his appeal for the rejection of worldly evils. The world collapses about us, et solliciti sumus, quid manducemus aut quid bibamus?⁹⁹ In spite of his old hatred of Rome, the news of the city's capture by Alaric in 410 filled him with gloom. In meditating on this dark event, Jerome turns to a consideration of the worldly vices which he had always associated with the fallen city:

Pro nefas, orbis terrarum ruit et in nobis peccata non corruunt. Urbs inclita et Romani imperii caput uno hausta est incendio. Nulla regio, quae non exules eius habeat. In cineres et favillas sacrae quondam ecclesiae conciderunt et tamen studemus avaritiae. Vivimus quasi altera die morituri et aedificamus quasi semper in hoc victuri saeculo. Auro parietes, auro laquearia, auro fulgent capita columnarum et nudus atque esuriens ante fores nostras in paupere Christus moritur.¹⁰⁰

The satirist's censure of his society gains new significance when that society is in very fact proved to be in a state of total collapse.

In reviewing now the passages of St. Jerome's letters in which he condemns the age in which he lived, one can see the special qualities which fitted him for his satiric role: the power keenly to observe the minute details of human behavior, the ability so to describe these details that their absurd elements are much exaggerated, and a certain lack of sympathy for human failings. It is a much more difficult task to try to evaluate the motives for his satire. The powerful influence of Jerome's rhetorical education which is so apparent in many passages suggests that his satire is at times based more on traditional ethical commonplaces than on his own immediate observations. Thus when he addresses to a simple monk a warning against building a luxurious home, the complete inappropriateness of the exhortation in its context makes it plain that Jerome is drawing on a traditional moralizing theme dear to the heart of satirists.¹⁰¹ In contrasting in a letter to Marcella the hatefulness of the city and the pleasantness of the simple country life, he recalls, without much reference to reality, a theme on which the sixth satire of Horace's second book and the third and eleventh satires of Juvenal are built.¹⁰² Yet there is no necessary conflict between a fully sincere disapproval of the faults of one's age and a somewhat artificial method of castigating those faults. Jerome's ardent championship of the nascent monastic movement indicates how strongly he sensed the gap between an ideal of Christian life and the reality of human behavior. Much of his mockery of social mores arose directly from his mission as an ascetic propagandist. We can perceive this in Jerome's own explanation of his attacks on gluttony: "Not because God … is delighted by the rumbling of our intestines and the emptiness of our belly, but because chastity cannot otherwise be safe."¹⁰³ In St. Jerome's writings one can see how the indignation of a Christian ascetic at the failings of society was strengthened by a scholar's knowledge of the traditional modes of moralistic exhortation.

Furthermore, the element of personal animus in Jerome's attack on his age must be considered. Jerome could never forgive Rome for having been the scene of. the defeat of his personal ambitions. Certainly it is hard to believe that if Jerome had received in Rome the recognition he thought he deserved as a scholar and monk he would have said to Rome, after lampooning the city's immorality: Invicem nobis videmur insani.¹⁰⁴ Yet one might go too far, with Grützmacher, in finding "persönliche Absichten" in much of Jerome's satire. For Jerome, the success of moral reform was indistinguishable from his own success as a moral reformer. His personal zeal for the lofty cause of asceticism would justify in Jerome's mind his artful and apparently selfish use of social satire in his letter to Pammachius. In Jerome's writings, hatred of luxury and immorality becomes a profoundly personal statement of his own hopes and ambitions. Our task now is to see whether these views of Jerome's satire are strengthened or modified by his remarks on the state of the world in his nonepistolary writings.

Historical Works

We include under the heading "Historical Works" the three biographies of the monks Paul, Hilarion, and Malchus, in spite of Gibbon's remark that, "the only defect in these pleasing compositions is the want of truth and common sense."¹⁰⁵ The earliest of these, the Life of Paul, is attributed by Cavallera to the time of Jerome's sojourn at Antioch after his return from the ascetic rigors of the Syrian desert.¹⁰⁶ The sudden change from the harsh habits of self-denial practiced by a desert hermit to the luxurious and decadent society of Antioch, so vividly described by St. John Chrysostom, must have heightened for Jerome the contrast between the aims of a Christianized society and its accomplishments. At the end of his description of the saintly and ascetic life of Paul, Jerome draws a satiric contrast between this ideally Christian life and the wantonness he could see around himself:

Libet in fine opusculi eos interrogare, qui sua patrimonia ignorant, qui domos marmoribus vestiunt, qui uno filo villarum insuunt pretia; huic seni nudo quid umquam defuit? Vos gemma bibitis, ille naturae concavis manibus satisfecit. Vos in tunicis aurum texitis, ille ne vilissimi quidem indumentum habuit mancipii vestri. Sed e contrario illi pauperculo paradisus patet, vos auratos gehenna suscipiet. Ille vestem Christi, nudus licet, tamen servavit; vos vestiti sericis, indumentum Christi perdidistis. Paulus vilissimo pulvere coopertus iacet resurrecturus in gloriam: vos operosa saxis sepulcra premunt cum vestris opibus arsuros. Parcite, quaeso, vos, parcite saitem divitiis quas amatis. Cur et mortuos vestros auratis obvolvitis vestibus? Cur ambitio inter luctus lacrymasque non cessat? An cadavera divitum nisi in serico putrescere nesciunt?¹⁰⁷

This description of luxury is not entirely original. The phrase gemma bibitis comes from Vergil's satiric denunciation of urban luxury at the end of the second book of the Georgics.¹⁰⁸ The scornful reference to necklaces as "estates and country houses sewn on one thread" is derived from a writer who spiritually was closely akin to Jerome. Tertullian, in an attack on luxury, says of necklaces, Uno lino decies sestertium inseritur.¹⁰⁹ Jerome's scorn and distaste are even more ardent than Tertullian's. Later in the passage, however, Jerome is clothing in Christian garb a traditional piece of pagan moralism when, turning to the silk-clad men who do not even know how much money they have, who dress their homes in marble and drink from jeweled cups, he says that in spite of their sculptured tombs they are doomed to burn in hell, wealth and all. We may compare Horace, Carmen ii. 14. 5-12:

Non, si trecenis, quotquot eunt dies,
  amice, places illacrimabilem
Plutona tauris, qui ter amplum
  Geryonen Tityonque tristi

compescit unda, scilicet omnibus,
quicumque terrae munere vescimur,
  enaviganda, sive reges
  sive inopes erimus coloni.

Jerome's reference to burning in hell adds a superficially Christian color to his invective against luxury. Nonetheless, the traditional spirit of this passage is plain. Jerome's remarks are in fact a Christian version of the attacks on luxury found in Stoic literature and epecially in Seneca.¹¹⁰

The Life of Malchus belongs to a later period of Jerome's life, the early years of his settlement in Bethlehem.¹¹¹ His view of society had scarcely improved in the years which separated the biography of Paul from that of Malchus. On the contrary, his opinions had grown far more critical in that he came to see the level of human civilization in general as having sunk to a new low. The Church too had shared in this decline. A separate chapter will be devoted to Jerome's bitter remarks on the corrupt state of the Church. Here, however, a passage must be pointed out in which the deterioration of the Church appears to be mentioned as part of the larger decline of human society as a whole. In his introduction to the Life of Malchus, Jerome declares that he is planning to write a complete history of the Church,

ab adventu Salvatoris usque ad nostram aetatem, id est, ab apostolis usque ad nostri temporis faecem, quomodo et per quos Christi ecciesia nata sit, et adulta, persecutionibus creverit, et martyriis coronata sit; et postquam ad Christianos principes venerit, potentia quidem et divitiis maior, sed virtutibus minor facta sit.¹¹²

The reference to faecem nostri temporis implies that society has been steadily declining until the bottom has been reached in Jerome's own day.¹¹³ We have seen above that such a view is common to moralists and especially to satiric moralists. But as a Christian critic of his times Jerome sees the Church as having taken part in this decline. The sentence in which the stages of the Church's deterioration are expressed bears a remarkable similarity to a passage in which Gibbon outlines the early history of Christianity: "The indissoluble connexion of civil and ecclesiastical affairs has compelled and encouraged me to relate the progress, the persecutions, the establishment, the divisions, the final triumph, and the gradual corruption of Christianity.¹¹⁴ Since the chapter of Gibbon in which the sentence is found is replete with references to Jerome's works in general and to the Life of Malchus in particular, it is possible that Gibbon was recalling here the passage in which Jerome described the decline of Christianity.¹¹⁵ It would be indeed ironic if the great critic of Christianity were borrowing the words of the most ardent champion of orthodoxy to sketch the Church's gradual corruption.

Polemical Works

The works written by Jerome expressly to crush his personal enemies and those of the Church are, as might be expected, filled with the bitterest kind of satiric references to individual persons. They are not, however, entirely devoid of caustic remarks on larger and more general themes, the vices of society as a whole.

One of Jerome's most acid polemical works is his pamphlet against Jovinianus. This "Urprotestant" held, among other heterodox opinions, the view that fasting was no more holy than moderate eating cum actione gratiarum. This opinion gave Jerome the opportunity to describe and lampoon gluttony in two highly colored passages:

Propter brevem gulae voluptatem, terrae lustrantur et maria; et ut mulsum vinum pretiosusque cibus fauces nostras transeat, totius vitae opera desudamus.¹¹⁶

The again:

Cum variis nidoribus fumant patinae, ad esum sui, expleta esurie, quasi captivos trahunt. Unde et morbi ex saturitate nimia concitantur; multique impatientiam gulae vomitu remediantur; et quod turpiter ingesserunt, turpius egerunt.… Noli timere ne, si carnes non comederis, aucupes, et venatores frustra artificia didicerint.¹¹⁷

Suddenly Jerome appears to realize the kinship between his theme and the ridicule on sensuality in pagan satire, for into this specifically Christian attack on an enemy of fasting, he introduces Horace:

Irridet Horatius appetitum ciborum, qui consumpti reliquerunt poenitentiam:

Sperne voluptates, nocet empta dolore voluptas.

Et cum in amoenissimo agro in morsum voluptuosorum hominum se crassum pinguemque describeret, lusit his versibus:

Me pinguem et nitidum, bene curata cute,
   vises,
cum ridere voles, Epicuri de grege porcum.¹¹⁸

Jerome then returns to a more specifically Christian tone, as in a vivid passage he warns those who eat even simple foods to avoid excess:

Nothing so overwhelms the mind as a full and boiling belly which turns every which way and releases itself with a blast in belching and breaking wind. What kind of fasting is it … when we are swollen with yesterday's banquets and our throat becomes merely a waiting room for the latrine? And while we wish to acquire a reputation for prolonged abstinence, we eat so much that the next night will hardly see it digested. Accordingly, this ought not be called fasting so much as drunkenness and stin-king indigestion.¹¹⁹

This detailed description of the effects of overeating reveals Jerome as an extremely vigorous and effective ridiculer of human behavior, but as one who did not always bother to adhere to the highest standards of taste.

Turning now to a much later controversial work, the Dialogus contra Pelagianos, in which an orthodox Catholic and a follower of the Pelagian heresy discuss the problem of free will, we find Jerome satirizing a defect which was characteristic of a Christian society and for which there was no pagan counterpart—hypocrisy in the giving of alms. Nevertheless the orthodox interlocutor is probably quoting classical satire when he addresses the heretic and declares that the Gospel injunction to love one's enemies is hard to fulfill: Forsitan in vestro coetu' invenitur, apud nos rara avis est.¹²⁰ The orthodox speaker then draws a brief picture of brotherly love as he has seen it:

Ad largiendum frustum panis et binos nummulos praeco conducitur, et extendentes manum, huc illucque circumspicimus, quae si nullus viderit, contractior fit. Esto, unus de mille inveniatur, qui ista non faciat.¹²¹

Here again we see Jerome using satire to expose the failure of a Christian ideal. One characteristic feature of satiric diction which occurs often in Jerome's passages of ridicule is the use of scornful diminutives (e.g. nummulos), a device favored also by Juvenal.¹²²

Exegetical Works

In studying St. Jerome's contributions to biblical exegesis, the most voluminous category of his writings, one must deal with works of a highly derivative nature, for Jerome is largely dependent on the long traditions of Jewish and Christian exegesis and especially on the works of Origen and the Alexandrian school.¹²³ Nonetheless, these writings are extremely rich sources for comments on the contemporary world, for time and time again we find Jerome applying the moral strictures of the Old Testament to his own day and embroidering these strictures in a highly picturesque manner.

The earliest of Jerome's commentaries, that on Ecclesiastes, is full of satiric descriptions of the gatherers of worldly wealth. Thus, expounding Ecclesiastes 2:24, Non est bonum bomini, nisi quod comedat, et bibat,… he writes: Quid enim boni est, aut quale Dei munus, vel suis opibus inhiare, et quasi fugientem praecerpere voluptatem, vel alienum labor em in proprias delicias vertere?¹²⁴ With the vivid image opibus inhiare we may compare opibus incubare, used by Jerome elsewhere in this commentary.¹²⁵ With both these images may be compared Horace's

             congestis undique saccis
indormis inhians.¹²⁶

It is possible, though of course uncertain, that Jerome had Horace's first satire in mind when he used these two images, for elsewhere in this commentary he makes clear and abundant use of Horace's ridicule of worldly pursuits.¹²⁷

The words of the Preacher, "a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones," rouse Jerome to an attack on the worldly passion for building:

Alii congregent lapides ad aedificia construenda, alii quae exstructa sunt destruant, secundum illud Horatianum:

Diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis.
Aestuat et vitae disconvenit ordine toto.¹²⁸

Jerome here takes up a theme often discussed in his letters, using the words of a pagan satirist to support the Old Testament moralist.

We find exactly the same procedure when Ecclesiastes speaks against the lovers of gold.¹³⁰ Jerome calls upon Horace to support the strictures:

Flacci quoque super hoc concordante sententia, qui ait:

Semper avarus eget.…

Quanto enim maior fuerit substantia, tanto plures ministros habebit, qui opes devorent congregatas. le autem videat tantum quod habet, et plus quam unius hominis cibum capere non possit.¹³¹

The last sentence may be an oblique reference to Horace's

Non tuus hoc capiet venter plus ac meus.132

Jerome's description of a typical rich man in this commentary is pure satire:

Dives vero distentus dapibus, et cogitationibus in diversa laceratus, dormire non [valet], redundante crapula, et incocto cibo in stomachi angustiis aestuante.¹³³

In contrast to the corruption and degeneracy here portrayed, Jerome pictures the ascetic ideal of a poor man walking the straight and narrow path which leads to eternal life.¹³⁴

After commenting on Ecclesiastes, Jerome turned his attention to the New Testament, expounding Paul's letters to Philemon, the Galatians, Titus, and the Ephesians. The first three of these works are virtually devoid of satiric remarks on the contemporary world, except for some caustic descriptions of clerical hypocrisy, a discussion of which may be deferred until we turn to Jerome's satire on the decline of the Church.¹³⁵ However, in expounding the Epistle to the Ephesians, Jerome delivers a curious attack on various forms of secular activity:

Nonne vobis videtur in vanitate sensus et obscuritate mentis ingredi, qui diebus ac noctibus in dialectica arte torquetur: qui physicus perscrutator oculos trans coelum levat, et ultra profundum terrarum et abyssi quoddam inane demergit, qui iambum struit, qui tantam metrorum silvam in suo studiosus corde distinguit et congerit; et (ut in alteram partem transeam) qui divitias per fas et nefas quaerit. Qui adulatur regibus, haereditates captat alienas, et opes congregat, quas in momento cui sit relicturus, ignorat?¹³⁶

Jerome's disapproval of dialectica ars is not surprising, for he frequently expresses dislike of subtle argumentation, connecting it with the treachery of heretics.¹³⁷ More puzzling is the attack on physical scientists and on poets. In view of the age in which Jerome lived, an age which could never be justly criticized for excessive love of science or poetry, these words of strong disapproval seem highly artificial. Yet Jerome does display a theoretical dislike of scientific speculation by twice quoting sympathetically the line of Aristophanes in which the poet mocks the physical speculations of Socrates.…

Since Jerome's attack on intellectual endeavor is accompanied by deprecatory remarks on the gathering of wealth and on legacy hunting, the words of disapproval should probably be considered to reflect a monkish rejection of all forms of worldly activity, including intellectual labor. This same attitude is reflected in other passages in this commentary where Jerome rails against those "who dispute about physical things, claim they can count the sands of the shore and the drops in the ocean, who, drunk with thoughts of this world, vomit, go mad, and fall headlong."¹³⁹ It is of course highly incongruous for St. Jerome to express such violent disapproval of worldly knowledge, since, as we have seen, he elsewhere (Letters 33, 43, and 53) points to the lack of interest in secular learning as an indication of the degeneracy of the age. Jerome was never able to reconcile in his own mind his love of worldly knowledge and his feeling that such knowledge was fundamentally unchristian.

After his exposition of the Pauline Epistles, Jerome returned to the Old Testament and began his series of commentaries on the twelve minor Hebrew prophets. In interpreting Micah, he mentions in passing the lovers of villas istius saeculi, a phrase in which the image of a large and noble home is significantly used to represent worldliness.¹⁴⁰ Then in his commentary on Zephaniah, Jerome delivers a brief but effective attack on effeminacy, an onslaught which in the bitterness of its ridicule recalls Juvenal's second satire: Peribit qui infemineo languore mollitus comam nutrit, vellit pilos, cutem polit, et ad speculum comitur, quae proprie passio et insania feminarum est.¹⁴¹ We have no indication that Jerome is here referring to a particular individual. Apparently the words are aimed at a widespread vice of the age.

The commentary on Zechariah belongs to a later period of Jerome's life, the opening years of the fifth century.¹⁴² Taking his cue from the words of the prophet, Quis enim despexit dies parvos? Jerome lampoons the worldly splendor of the rich: Cum viderimus potentes saeculi fulgere auro, purpura, gemmis rutilare, circumdari exercitu, dicamus in nobis: quis, putas, despicit dies parvos?¹⁴³ The satiric element in this passage lies in two words, rutilare and exercitu. These are the two brush strokes which transform a simple drawing into a caricature of arrogant pomp. Jerome achieves his aim of exposure and ridicule by a subtle use of two exaggerated descriptive details.

In the commentary on Amos, too, Jerome lashes out at the rich and powerful. Explicating Amos 6:1, "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion," he says:

Isti sunt capita populorum, qui confidunt in divitiis, et opulenti sunt in Sion.… Et ingrediuntur pompatice domum Israel, ut tumorem animi corpus ostendat, et pomparum ferculis similes esse vide-antur.¹⁴⁴

This passage reveals Jerome as a mosaic artist setting into his works highly colored extracts from pagan literature. The satiric description of a haughty manner of walking borrows from Cicero's warning: Cavendum autem est, ne … tarditatibus utamur in ingressu mollioribus, ut pomparum ferculis similes esse videamur.¹⁴⁵ Jerome the Ciceronianus cannot repress a reminiscence of his beloved author even in a commentary on an Old Testament prophet. Evidently the phrase pomparum ferculis similes struck Jerome as an apt portrayal of arrogance, for he uses the expression on several occasions.¹⁴⁶

The detailed commentaries on the three major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, were composed by Jerome toward the close of his life. They belong to the years 408-416. The earliest of them, that on Isaiah, contains several bitter references to the faults of the age. It is an age of ignorance in which men's ears are scornful of the products of hard intellectual labor but are delighted by showy eloquence. We become nauseated by the effort required for the understanding of Sacred Scripture.¹⁴⁷ This theme recalls Jerome's attacks on the ignorance of his age in his letters written from Rome.¹⁴⁸ Furthermore, claims Jerome, it is an age in which the rich are flattered but the poor despised, in which the rich taste all the sensual delights of luxurious banquets in houses whose ceilings are gilded, whose walls are clothed in crusts of marble and are agleam with cut ivory, while the poor, without the meanest shelter, freeze to death.¹⁴⁹ This attack on current society is elicited by Isaiah's apocalyptic vision of the destruction of the earthly city. It clearly demonstrates Jerome's use of biblical exhortations as the starting point for his expression of anger at the elements in contemporary society which he considered corrupt and unchristian.

Two of Jerome's attacks on the vices of society in the commentary on Isaiah show the influence of Horace. The first example is obvious and certain: Isaiah's attack on avarice recalls the remark of Horace, Semper avarus eget.¹⁵⁰ The second instance is less definite. Jerome describes the dissatisfaction of men with their place in life:

Saepe videmus in saeculo quosdam de alio proposito transire ad aliud. Verbi gratia, ut qui militiam male experti sunt, transeunt ad negotiationem. Rursumque causidicos bellatorum arma corripere. Mutant industriam, ut mutent infelicitatem.¹⁵¹

The sentiment of this passage is highly reminiscent of the opening lines of the first satire of Horace's first book, in which the longing of businessmen, soldiers, and lawyers to change their role in life is described. Although there is no verbal similarity between Jerome and Horace, it is possible that Jerome is here drawing upon the pagan satirist or at least upon the same moralistic material which Horace used in composing Satire I. 1.

The commentary on Ezekiel belongs to the years 410-412 and is strongly marked by the tragic political events of those years. The fate of the Roman nobility in Alaric's capture of the city is reflected in the remark that the rich, whose lives were passed amid silk, gems, and the weight of gold and silver, end their days as beggars.¹⁵² Those who belched with their fullness, who did not even know the extent of their wealth, are now in need of food, clothing, and shelter.¹⁵³ In spite of the formerly dissipated lives of such people, Jerome gazes upon their fate with tears and groans. And yet he must admit that their spirits have been but little softened by their chastening. On the contrary, they seek gold even in their captivity. Some of the rich have gone so far as to pretend by their vile clothing that they are poor, though they "lie upon the wealth of Croesus."¹⁵⁴ In spite of Jerome's brief attempt to be sympathetic to the plight of the rich, his more usual attitude returns as he attacks their hyprocrisy and secret avarice. Indeed, his view of the rich is only partially and temporarily governed by the actuality of their sad fate at the time he is writing, for sometimes his words recall an earlier period of dissipation before the disastrous events of the Gothic invasion. Thus he suggests that the rich do not dress to keep out the cold but rather choose garments quae tenuitate sui, corpora nuda demonstrent.¹⁵⁵

Conclusion

St. Jerome's sense of the decline of civilization and his disgust with the vices of "the world" form an important theme in all categories of his writings, from the letters written in the desert of Chalcis when he was a young man to his late exegetical and homiletic works. Every opportunity offered by a biblical text to mount an attack upon contemporary failings is immediately seized upon, with the result that these invectives sometimes appear as leitmotivs automatically recalled whenever the context of a passage suggests worldly sin. Jerome can rarely mention the contemporary world without adding a portrayal of silken garments, gluttonous banquets, and marble-encrusted buildings. In Jerome's mind the disastrous political events of the day are the result of the decline of morals.

To be sure, disdain for the contemporary world and its standards is an attitude to be expected in the writings of an ascetic enthusiast such as Jerome. Moreover, it should be considered neither surprising nor coincidental that the manner in which Jerome expresses his disdain closely resembles in thought and diction passages in such pagan writers as Horace, Persius, Seneca, and Juvenal. All these writers were influenced to a greater or lesser extent by Stoicism, and between the ethics of the Stoa and those of ascetic Christianity were many points of contact.¹⁵⁶ Jerome himself refers to Stoici, qui nostro dogmati in plerisque concordant.¹⁵⁷ Certainly the Stoic doctrine that virtue is the only source of happiness led to a repudiation of commonly accepted standards of behavior. There is a powerful note of asceticism in later Stoicism.¹⁵⁸ Zeller compares the Stoic sense of the depth and extent of human depravity as expressed, for instance, by Seneca to the attitude of the early Christian theologians.¹⁵⁹ The forged correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul implies that the early Christians sensed in Seneca a kindred spirit. St. Jerome includes Seneca in his catalogue of illustrious Christians.¹⁶⁰ But Jerome's realization of the similarity of his own moral outlook to that of certain pagan writers extended beyond an appreciation of Seneca alone. As a scholar whose mind was deeply imbued with pagan Latin letters, Jerome seized upon those passages in pagan writers in which contemporary standards were lampooned and in which he found abumbrated his feelings toward his own society. The richest source of such passages were the satiric poets.

However, in addition to Jerome's ascetic outlook on the world and his acquaintance with pagan Latin letters, the element of personal animus should not be overlooked in investigating the hostilities of this harsh and bitter man. Jerome had had his worldly ambitions, the complete failure of which filled him with bitterness toward the society that had refused to recognize his claims and that had driven him into the comparative retirement of his Bethlehem monastery.

Yet it is too simple to see in Jerome's attacks on society merely the propaganda of a leader of the monastic movement or the petulant anger of a disappointed recluse. The ideals which lay behind his satiric attacks were higher. We find them expressed in a passage in his commentary on Jonah: "It is difficult for powerful men and noble men and rich men, and much more difficult for eloquent men, to believe in God. For their mind is blinded by riches and wealth and luxury, so that, surrounded by vices, they cannot see the virtue and simplicity of Holy Scripture."¹⁶¹ Again, in the commentary on Ezekiel: "Pride, satiety of food, abundance of possessions, leisure and pleasure are the sins of Sodom and on account of them forgetfulness of God follows, that forgetfulness which imagines that present goods will last forever and that the necessities of life will never be needed."¹⁶² Jerome's feeling that contemporary morals had reached a new depth of debasement was, then, the same sense of the failure of Christianity to reform society completely which kindled the growth of the monastic movement in the latter part of the fourth century. To be sure, the highest ideal of the ascetic was complete indifference to the affairs of the world: Nos quoque eos, qui ad saeculi mala et bona vel contristantur vel exultant, mulieres appellemus, molli et effeminato animo.¹⁶³ But St. Jerome, unable by nature to achieve this ideal, returns again and again ad saeculi mala. His caustic personality and his keen and penetrating powers of observation precluded his merely denouncing the social evils which he perceived. Rather he portrays them with an exactness and an amplitude whose obvious aim is to lampoon and ridicule. Even in his monk's cell at Bethlehem his mind ranged over the faults and failings of the Worldly City, and he could truthfully say in a passage in which his devotion to Christian scholarship and to the ascetic life is strikingly blended with his concern for the fate of the world: Totum me huic trado studio, et quasi in quadam specula constitutus, mundi huius turbines atque naufragia, non absque gemitu et dolore contemplor.¹⁶⁴

Notes

¹Sat. 1. 87.

²Sat. 13. 28-30. In line 28 nona is Clausen's reading. Others read nunc with the P manuscript. For the sentiment, cf. Sat. 6. 1-20 and 11. 56-161.

³ Persius 1.1. This line probably comes from Lucilius. See Marx, I, 9. For St. Jerome's use of the line, see Anecdot. Mared., III, 2, 130, and III, 3, 83.

⁴Epist. 86. 4. Cf. Quaest. nat. i. xvii. 8 for a similar idealization of Scipio's age.

⁵ Amm. Marc. xiv. 6. 11. Note the characteristic at nunc with which both Seneca and Ammianus introduce their satiric description of present decadence. Cf. Juvenal 11. 120: At nunc divitibus cenandi nulla voluptas. Also Juvenal 14. 189: Haec illi veteres praecepta minoribus, at nunc.…

⁶ Amm. Marc. xxviii. 4. 17.

⁷ For the locus communis de saeculo, see J. de Decker, Juvenalis declamans (Ghent, 1913), 22-38.

⁸ Letter 107. 1. For date, Cavallera, II, 47. Cf. Prudentius, Peristephanon, II, 509-529.

⁹ Letter 106. 1. On the identity of Sunnia and Fretela see J. Zeiler, "St. Jérôme et les Goths," in Miscellanea Geronimiana (Rome, 1920), 123-130. He accepts the identification of the two with the editors of the Latin-Gothic Bible, the Codex Brixianus. He also identifies Fretela with a Gothic bishop of Thracian Heraclea of that name, but Cavallera (I, 292, n. 1) demurs. De Bruyne believes the circumstances of the letter to be completely fictitious, Zeitschr. für neutest. Wiss., XXVIII (1929), 1-13.

¹⁰PL 25, 504A. See J.-R. Palanque, "St. Jerome and the Barbarians," in A Monument to St. Jerome (New York, 1952), 173-199. Also, E. Demougeot, "St. Jérôme les Oracles Sibyllins et Stilicho," Rev. des Et. Anciennes, LIV (1952), 83-92, who gives an account of other contemporary predictions of the end of the Roman Empire.

¹¹ Letter 60. 16. H. Levy has demonstrated that this passage was influenced by Claudian's In Rufinum: see "Claudian's In Rufinum and an Epistle of St. Jerome," Am. Journ. Philol., LXIX (1948), 62-68.

¹² Letter 123. 15 and 16. Cf. Lucan v. 274. Jerome's reaction to the capture of Rome is expressed in Letter 127. 12. For St. Augustine's first reaction, see his sermon De urbis excidio, ii. 3 (PL 40, 718): Horrenda nobis nuntiata sunt; strages facta, incendia, rapinae, interfectiones, excruciationes hominum. Verum est, multa audivimus, omnia gemuimus, saepe flevimus, vix consolati sumus; non abnuo, non nego multa nos audisse, multa in illa urbe esse commissa. For a summary of contemporary views on the collapse of the Roman world, see H. Daniel-Rops, The Church in the Dark Ages, tr. by A. Butler (London, 1959), 76-79.

¹³ Letter 60. 17.

¹⁴ So called after Didymus Chalcenterus, of whom Origen is the Christian equivalent. Jerome says of him, Tanto in sanctarum scriptuarum commentariis sudore laboravit, ut iuste adamantis nomen acceperit (Letter 33. 4).

¹⁵ It is noteworthy that Jerome here (Letter 33. 1) chides his contemporaries for their lack of interest in secular letters, since throughout his biblical commentaries he constantly derides heretics and pagans for their devotion to saecularis sapientia (see below, Chapter V). This incongruity is of singular importance in Jerome's life and career. Jerome again lampoons the ignorance of his age in Letter. 43. 2.

¹⁶ Letter 33. 3. The date is probably 385. See Cavallera, II, 26. There are very similar passages in Letter 27. 1 and 52. 6. See also S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire (London, 1899), 130-131.

¹⁷ Lucilius iv, 167; viii, 308-318; ix, 327-329; xiii, 140, in Marx's edition. Varro had treated the subject in his Menippean satire … (Schanz-Hosius I⁴, 558); Horace in Sat. ii. 2 and 4. For a list of satiric passages on gluttony (many of them similar to Jerome's attack) in Seneca and Juvenal, see Carl Schneider, Juvenal und Seneca (Wurzburg, 1930), 27-28. For the Greek background of this topic, see G. Fiske, Lucilius and Horace (Madison, 1920), 398-405.

¹⁸ Tertullian De Pallio v. 6; Amm. Marc. xxviii. 4. 13.

¹⁹ Amm. Marc. xiv. 6. 16.

²⁰Ibid., xxx. 4. 17.

²¹ Persius 6. 24.

²² Juvenal 4. 139-143. Cf. Sat. 14. 8-10, Juvenal's description of the education of a youthful glutton who:

"Boletum condire et eodem iure natantis mergere ficedulas didicit nebulone parente et cana monstrante gula.…"

²³ Juvenal 4. 23 and II. 1; Martial ii. 69. 3; ii. 89. 5; iii. 2. 1. On Paxamus, see Morel in Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, 36³, 2436.

²⁴ Horace Sat. ii. 5 is devoted to legacy hunting. Also Juvenal 1. 37-44; 5. 137-145; 12. 93-130. See in addition, Horace Epist. i. 1. 78-79, Cicero Paradoxa Stoic. 5. 2. 39, Seneca De ben. vi. 38 and Ad Marc. 19. 2.

²⁵ Amm. Marc. xxviii. 4. 22.

²⁶ See Codex Theodosianus 16. 2. 20, and Novels of Valentinian, III. 21. 3.

²⁷ Grützmacher, II, 223.

²⁸ Letter 33. 6.

²⁹ For Rome as Babylon, see Letter 45. 6. Cf. Praefat. trans. libri Didymi de Spiritu Sancto, PL 23, 107A: Cum in Babylone versarer: et purpuratae meretricis essem colonus.

³⁰ Letter 24. 5.

³¹Psychomachia, 310-343.

³² By T. R. Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century (Cambridge, 1901), 264.

³³ Letter 43. 2. Cf. Letter 33.

³⁴ Letter 43. 2.

³⁵Ibid.

³⁶ Asyndeton as a device for creating vividness is common in Juvenal. See I. G. Scott, The Grand Style in the Satires of Juvenal, in "Smith College Classical Studies" (Northampton, 1927), 26; also William S. Anderson, "Juvenal and Quintilian," Yale Classical Studies, XVII (1961), 84. For asyndeton in Jerome, see J. N. Hritzu, The Style of the Letters of St. Jerome (Cath. U. of Am. Patristic Studies, LX), 48.

³⁷ Letter 43. 3.

³⁸ Letter 22. 16 and 28. It seems not previously to have been noticed that the expression matronarum senatus is probably derived from Porphyry's lost work on chastity in which he made bitter remarks on women and marriage. In his commentary on Isaiah, PL 24, 67C, Jerome says that Porphyry had spoken of mulieres and matronae as a senatus. E. Bickel has brilliantly succeeded in reconstructing Porphyry's work on chastity and has shown that Jerome was thoroughly acquainted with it and used it in writing Adversus Iovinianum. See Bickel's Diatribe in Senecae Philosophi fragmenta (Leipzig, 1915), 195-204. Since the phrase matronarum senatus does not seem to be derived from any of Porphyry's extant works (Luebeck did not attribute it to any known work), it is probable that it was derived from this work, in which Porphyry made bitter references to women.

³⁹ Horace Sat. ii. 6. 17-58, and Juvenal Sat. 3 and 11. 183-208. Cf. Jerome Letter 125. 8: Mihi oppidum carcer est, et solitudo paradisus. Quid desideramus urbium frequentiam, qui de singularitate censemur?

⁴⁰ Letter 43. 3. Cf. the praise of country life as an aid to asceticism in Adv. Iovin., PL 23, 311C-312A.

⁴¹ Quintilian ii. 4. 24.

⁴² Chronology in Cavallera, II, 26.

⁴³ On the relationship between Jerome and Damasus see esp. A. Penna, S. Girolamo (Rome and Turin, 1949), 64-74, and E. Caspar, Geschichte des Papstums (Tiibingen, 1930), I, 246-256. Jerome claims to have been the Pope's mouthpiece, Letter 45. 3. The extremely unfavorable opinion of Damasus found in Amm. Marc, xxvii. 3. 12. and in the Libellus precum (PL 13, 81-11 2, and CSEL, XXXV, ed. O. Guenther) is reflected nowhere in Jerome's writings.

⁴⁴ Letter 38. 5. The sentiment is repeated in Letter 54. 5.

⁴⁵ Letter 38. 5.

⁴⁶ Cf. Letter 107. 10. There are open references to this line of Persius in Adv. Iovin. 329C and Comm. in Jer., PL 24, 794C; CSEL, LIX, 164. Conington in his edition of Persius refers to the scholiast's comments on this line and to Isidore of Seville Orig. xi. 1. 136. for the original meaning of aqualiculus. Conington suggests that Persius was the first to apply the word to the human paunch.

⁴⁷ Letter 39. 3.

⁴⁸ Letter 45. 2.

⁴⁹ Letter 45. 3. It is not known whether Jerome had any reasonable grounds for this claim. See E. Caspar, Geschichte des Papstums, I, 257.

⁵⁰ Letter 45. 5.

⁵¹Contra Ruf iii. 22 (PL 23, 494C).

⁵² This whole tour is described in detail in Letter 108.

⁵³ Letter 46. Although Jerome's relations with Rome were broken for about seven years after his departure, the favorable view of the spiritual life of the Holy Land expressed in this letter suggests that it was written not too long after Jerome's settlement there. See Cavallera, II, 43; the year 392 is a probable date.

⁵⁴ Cavallera, I, 165.

⁵⁵ Letter 46. 10 and 11.

⁵⁶Ep. 90. 42. Laquearia are used with the same moral significance in Ep. 90. 15.

⁵⁷Sat. 7. 178. Cf. Sat. 4. 6 and 14. 85-95.

⁵⁸ Letter 14. 6.

⁵⁹ Letter 52. 1, dated 394. With Jerome's use here of the word lusimus may be compared Horace's references to his writing of satire as ludere and illudere (Sat. i. 10. 37 and i. 4. 39).…

⁶¹ Letter 46. 11.

⁶² Letter 52. 10. Jerome is referring here, of course, to the corruption of the clergy.

⁶³ Letter 58. 7.

⁶⁴ Letter 130. 14. Cf. Comm. in Zach., PL 25, 1467B, where the language describing the outward luxury of churches is very similar but where the tone is much less disapproving, since there Jerome is trying to use these outward signs as proof of the progress of Christianity. On the "marble crusts" mentioned by Jerome cf. Ulpian's legal principle that when a building is sold, Quae tabulae pictae pro tectorio includuntur itemque crustae marmoreae aedium sunt. See Digest 19, 1, 17, 3; Corpus iuris civilis, I (Berlin, 1954), 280.

⁶⁵ Grützmacher, III, 256. The letter is attributed to the year 414 by N. Pronberger, Beiträge zur Chronologie der Briefe des hl. Hieronymus (Amberg, 1913), 95.

⁶⁶ It is possible that the disapproval of ornate churches expressed in the spurious Letter 148. 19 influenced its erroneous attribution to Jerome. Vallarsi (PL 22, 1204, Note D) attributed the letter to Sulpicius Severus. As a leader of the monastic movement, Sulpicius, like Jerome, would probably have felt the ascetic's dislike of elaborate churches. For Jerome's attitude toward the plastic arts in general, see Eiswirth, Hieronymus' Stellung, 53-72.

⁶⁷ Letter 46. 12.

⁶⁸ Jerome insists (Letter 24. 1), Nemo reprehendat quod in epistulis aliquos aut laudamus aut carpimus, cum et in arguendis malis sit correptio ceterorum et in optimis praedicandis bonorum ad virtutem studia concitentur. Jerome well knew the effect his satire was creating. Writing to Marcella, he says, Scio te cum ista legeris rugare frontem, et libertatem rursum seminarium timere rixarum, ac meum, si fieri potest, os digito velle comprimere, ne audeam dicere quae alii facere non erubescunt (Letter 27. 2).

⁶⁹ Letter 53. 3; Revelation 3:7.

⁷⁰ Letter 53. 7. The quotation is from Horace, Epist. ii. 1. 115-117. P. Courcelle believes that these barbs are directed specifically against Vigilantius. See his "Paulin de Nole et Saint Jérôme," in Revue des Etudes Latines, XXV (1947), 263, n. 4.

⁷¹ Letter 53. 7. Cf. Persius 3. 82, from which Jerome has borrowed some descriptive details.

⁷² Letter 45. 2.

⁷³ Letter 45. 3.

⁷⁴ Eiswirth, Hieronymus' Stellung, 43.

⁷⁵ Letter 58. 4. Apparently Paulinus took Jerome's portrayal of Jerusalem seriously. In his Letter XXXI. 3 (CSEL, XXIX, 270), Paulinus repeats part of Jerome's description. See the work of Courcelle cited above (n. 70), p. 254, n. 1. Jerome's inconsistency is clearly revealed when Letter 58, in which Jerusalem is described as another Rome, is compared with Letter 127. 8, where Rome is hailed as a new Jerusalem.

⁷⁶ Grutzmacher, II, 228.

⁷⁷ Cavallera, II, 89; Labourt's edition of the Letters, III, 235; Eiswirth, Hieronymus' Stellung, 73-96. Courcelle's brilliant reconstruction of Paulinus' letters to Jerome requires Letter 58 to precede Letter 53. See above, n. 70.

⁷⁸ Cavallera, II, 90. Even if Cavallera's reasonable view is accepted, the truth of the following remark of Grutzmacher cannot be denied: "Dem vielgewandten Hieronymus ist es naturlich ebenso gut moglich, fur die Wallfahrt nach Jerusalem, wenn er sie wunscht, wie gegen eine solche, wenn er sie nicht wunscht, eine Fulle von Argumenten beizurbringen" (II, 228).

⁷⁹ Letter 66. 4.…

⁸¹ Letter 66. 5.

⁸² Letter 45. 3.

⁸³ Letter 66. 5. This passage may recall Vergil Georgics ii. 461-462.

⁸⁴ Letter 46. 12.

⁸⁵ On this important aristocrat, who played a considerable role in many of the religious controversies of the later fourth century, see W. Ensslin in Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, 36², 296-298.

⁸⁶ Letter 66. 6.

⁸⁷ On the opposition to monasticism see Fliche and Martin, Histoire de l'Eglise (Paris, 1950), III, 358-364.

⁸⁸ Letter 66. 4.

⁸⁹Ibid.

⁹⁰ Letter 66. 5.

⁹¹ Letter 66. 8.

⁹² Juvenal 11. 139. Petronius too uses the birds of Phasis in his satiric references to gluttony, Satyricon 119, lines 36-37.…

⁹⁴ Letter 107. 10.

⁹⁵Sat. i. 2. 8. Cf. Tertullian De ieiunio i. I for a similar use of ingluvies.

⁹⁶ Persius 1. 57. Cf. Letter 38. 5 and Adv. Iovin., PL 23, 329C.

⁹⁷ Letter 123. 16.

⁹⁸ Letter 125. 20.

⁹⁹ Letter 123. 14.

¹⁰⁰ Letter 128. 5. Cf. Letter 23. 15. Cf. also Tertullian Apologeticum xxxix. 14: De nobis scilicet Diogenis dictum est: "Megarenses obsonant quasi crastina die morituri, aedificant vero quasi numquam morituri" (CSEL, LXIX, 94).

¹⁰¹ Letter 14. 6.

¹⁰² Letter 43. 3.

¹⁰³ Letter 22. 11.

¹⁰⁴ Letter 45. 5.

¹⁰⁵Decline and Fall, ch. xxxvii, n. 17 (Bury's ed., IV, 66). It might be objected that Jerome was well aware that he was not writing history in composing these lives. This is probably true. But since the standard histories of literature class the hagiographical writings as historical works, it has been thought wise to accept this classification. See Schanz-Hosius 4¹, 435; Bardenhewer, 3, 637; Altaner, Patrologie, 361. Cf. also De Labriolle, II, 507. For a perceptive treatment of these biographies, which were meant to be primarily works of edification, see H. Delehaye, Les Legendes Hagiographiques (3d ed.; Brussels, 1927).

¹⁰⁶ Cavallera, II, 16-17.

¹⁰⁷PL 23, 28A-30A. Cf. Comm. in Matt., PL 26, 223C: Ex simplici sepultura Domini, ambitio divitum condemnatur, qui ne in tumulis quidem possunt carere divitiis.

¹⁰⁸Georgics ii, 506. The phrase gemma bibere is also used in Letter 30. 13. This phrase is also found in Ambrose's satiric denunciation of female luxury: Illa tibi inponet sumptuum necessitatem, ut gemma bibat, in ostro dormiat, in argentea sponda recumbat.… De Nabuthae, 5, 25-26. Quoted by Weston, 80.

¹⁰⁹De cultu feminarum I, 9; CSEL, LXX, 70. The interpretation of uno filo villarum insuunt pretia here given follows Vallarsi's note on the passage. For pretia Vallarsi prints praedia, which cannot be correct.

¹¹⁰ E.g., Naturales quaestiones i. praef. 8: Non potest [animus] ante contemnere porticus et lacunaria ebore fulgentia et tonsiles silvas et sderivata in domos flumina quam totum circumit mundum et, terrarum orbem superne despiciens.… Cf. ibid., i. xvii and iii. xviii.

¹¹¹ Cavallera, II, 27.

¹¹²PL 23, 55A-B.

¹¹³ It is possible that faecem nostri temporis refers only to the condition of the Church. It is much more probable however that Jerome here is speaking of the decline of civilization in general, for he expresses this pessimistic view of the world elsewhere. Cf. Comm. in Eccles., PL 23, 1090B: Nunc vero pro saeculorum quotidie in peius labentium vitio.

¹¹⁴Decline and Fall, IV, 62.

¹¹⁵ For references to the Vita Malchi, see Gibbon, ch. xxxvii, n. 17 and 34.

¹¹⁶PL 23, 311A.

¹¹⁷PL 23, 313B and 315A.

¹¹⁸PL 23, 315B; Horace Epist. i. 2. 55, and i. 4. 15. On Porphyry's influence, see Luebeck, 70.

¹¹⁹PL 23, 315C.

¹²⁰PL 23, 572A-B. It is impossible to determine whether the expression rara avis here refers to Persius 1. 46, Juvenal 6. 165, or to the general body of proverbial expressions about aves of which other examples are given by A. Otto, Die Sprichwdrter der Romer (Leipzig, 1890), 51-52. Luebeck, 195, n. 4, attributes the phrase, without giving any authority, to Persius.

¹²¹PL 23, 572A-B. Cf. Anecdot. Mared., III, 2, 256. (CC 88, 278): Invenias aliquos de Christianis ideo dare elemosinam, ut laudentur a populo. Si quando pauper rogat, huc illucque circumspiciunt; et nisi testem viderint, pecuniam non dant. Si solus fuerit, manus contractior est, non dat libenter.

¹²² E.g. 1. 11 pelliculae; 1. 40 unciolam; 7. 119 petasunculus; 13. 40 virguncula. On Jerome's use of diminutives, see H. Goelzer, Etude Lexicographique et Grammatical de la Latinite de Saint Jérôme (Paris, 1884), 121-130.

¹²³ See esp. A. Penna, Principi e caratere dell' esegesi di S. Girolamo (Rome, 1950), and L. N. Hartmann, "St. Jerome as an Exegete," in A Monument to St. Jerome, ed. F. X. Murphy (New York, 1952), 37-81.

¹²⁴PL 23, 1085C; CC 72, 272.

¹²⁵PL 23, 11OB. Also Comm. in Jer., PL 24 742D; Comm. in Ezech., PL 25, 290B and 316C.

¹²⁶Sat. i. 1. 70-71.

¹²⁷Sat. i. 10. 72 is quoted immediately above opibus inhiare, PL 23, 1085A. The image of brooding upon wealth may be a reminiscence of Vergil Aeneid vi. 610:

"aut qui divitiis soli incubuere repertis."

Cf. Georgics ii, 463 and 507 and see also Sulpicius Severus' attack on the clergy: inhiant possessionibus … auro incubant (Chron. i. 23).

¹²⁸PL 23, 1088C. Horace Epist. i. 1. 99-100. The reversed order in which Jerome cites these lines suggests that he was quoting from memory.…

¹³⁰Eccles. 5: 10.

¹³¹PL 23, 1109A-B; Horace Epist. i. 1. 56. The remarks on the ministri who devour the gathered wealth are reminiscent of Horace Sat. i. 1. 77-78:

"Formidare malos fures, incendia, servos,
ne te compilent fugientes, hoc iuvat?"

For the thought cf. Juvenal 14. 303-331.

¹³²Sat. i. 1. 46.

¹³³PL 23, 1109B-C. CC 72, 295.

¹³⁴PL 23, 1113B. CC 72, 299.

¹³⁵PL 23, 452B-C. Below, Chapter IV.

¹³⁶PL 26, 536D-537A.

¹³⁷ E.g. PL 25, 863D, 927A, 1025A, and 1044B.…

¹³⁹PL 26, 552B; cf. 561B.

¹⁴⁰ PL 25, 1167B.

¹⁴¹PL 25, 1350C.

¹⁴² Cavallera, II, 51-52.

¹⁴³PL 25, 1444C.

¹⁴⁴PL 25, 1058A.

¹⁴⁵De off. i. 36. 131.

¹⁴⁶ Cf. Letter 3. 6 and 125. 16.

¹⁴⁷PL 24, 22A and 289D.

¹⁴⁸ Cf. Letters 33. 3; 43. 2; and 53. 5.

¹⁴⁹PL 24, 293A-B.

¹⁵⁰PL 24, 49A; Horace Epist. i. 2. 56.

¹⁵¹PL 24, 288A. The same sense of the weary uselessness of earthly activity is found in Jerome's exposition of the text Anni nostri sicut aranea meditabuntur. The psalmist, says Jerome, nihil pulchrius potuit dicere quam ut humanam vitam et omnem sollicitudinem nostram studiaque describeret, quibus huc illucque discurrimus et opes praeparamus, divitias quaerimus, aedificamus domos, liberos procreamus; et videte cui rei comparantur. Anni nostri sicut aranea meditabuntur (Anecdot. Mared., II, 3. 65; CC 78, 418).

¹⁵²PL 25, 71D.

¹⁵³PL 25, 175B and 199B.

¹⁵⁴PL 25, 231C-D.

¹⁵⁵PL 24, 432C. Cf. Letter 127. 3.

¹⁵⁶ On the influence of Stoicism on Roman Satire see Duff, Roman Satire, 116; for Horace and the Stoa, 78 and 80-81; for Juvenal, 162. Also De Decker, Juvenalis declamans, 19-20, and R. Schütze, Juvenalis ethicus (Greifswald, 1905). G. Highest, "The Philosophy of Juvenal," TAP A, LXXX (1949), 254-270, sees Juvenal as an Epicurean late in life.

¹⁵⁷Comm. in Isa., XI, 6-9 (PL 24, 151B).

¹⁵⁸ See E. Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity (Hibbert Lectures, 1888; reprinted, New York, 1957).

¹⁵⁹ E. Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, tr. by L. R. Palmer (13th ed.; London, 1955), 221.

¹⁶⁰De vir. ill. XII (PL 23, 662A).

¹⁶¹PL 25, 1143C. We may contrast the Stoic position as phrased by Seneca: Hanc praecedentem causam divitiae habent: inflant animos, superbiam pariunt, invidiam contrahunt, et usque eo mentem alienant, ut fama pecuniae nos etiam nocitura delectet (Epist. 87. 31). Cf. Matt. 19:23.

¹⁶²PL 25, 155A.

¹⁶³PL 25, 83A.

¹⁶⁴PL 24, 195B.