SOURCE: "St. Jerome as an Historian" in A Monument to Saint Jerome: Essays on Some Aspects of His Life, Works and Influence, edited by Francis X. Murphy, Sheed & Ward, 1952, pp. 115-41.

[In the essay that follows, Murphy describes the development of Jerome's interest in history alongside a chronological investigation of his life and writings. Murphy notes how that interest expresses itself in Jerome's writings that are not overtly historical.]

The seventy-odd years that form the Age of St. Jerome—from 347 to 420—were hardly an era of great historical writing. As F. Lot and Professor Laistner have pointed out, but for the productions of the pagan Ammianus Marcellinus and the Christian Sulpicius Severus, the fifth century finds the West bereft of any true historian. But the situation might easily have been different. For, several times in the course of his long, eventful career, the most erudite man of the age, Jerome of Stridon, had promised himself and posterity that he would get round to writing a first-class history of the Christian era. Thus, in the opening chapter of his Life of Malchus, written in 390 or 391, Jerome says:

I have purposed—if the Lord gives me life and my detractors cease to persecute me, who am now a fugitive and shut off from the world—to write a history from the coming of the Savior down to our own times, from the Apostles to the dregs of this age, and to describe how and through whom Christ's Church came into being; how, growing up, it waxed by persecutions and was crowned with martyrdoms; and how, after reaching the Christian Emperors, it became yet greater in power and wealth, but declined in virtue.¹

A decade earlier, when finishing his translation of the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea (381), he had also promised:

I have been content to reserve for a much broader history (latiori historiae) the remainder of the reigns of Gratian and Theodosius, not because I hesitate to write freely and truthfully about the living—for the fear of the Lord dispels the fear of men—but because, with the barbarians roving about wildly on our very own soil, all things are uncertain.²

Jerome was actually haunted by an historical sense. It permeates his Scriptural commentaries. It is continually betraying itself in his letters and controversies. It was due unquestionably to the classical training to which he had been subjected as a boy—to his familiarity with Tacitus and Livy, with Suetonius, Herodotus and Xenophon. But it was just as certainly due to the influences of Christianity thrust upon him in Rome, as an impressionable youth coming into contact with the recently recognized ecclesiastical authorities, as well as wandering through the catacombs, and meditating upon this new spiritual force that "in the fulness of time" was found gradually growing upon Imperial Rome.

An early indication of such historical awareness is given in his preoccupation with the work of Hilary of Poitiers, On the Synods, when he arrived in Treves in 367, having completed his classical studies in Rome.³ It is equally evident in his appeal to the Pope in Rome a few years later, when in the desert of Chalcis he is called upon by the contentious monks there to take a stand with regard to the Antiochian schism and the Trinitarian controversy then raging: "Now indeed, proh dolor! After the faith of Nicea, after the decree of Alexandria joined in by the West, a new expression for the three hypostases is demanded by the Arian offspring, by these peasants, of me, a man of Rome!"⁴ It is fully apparent, once he has been through the "postgraduate" Scripture course at Constantinople under (among others) St. Gregory Nazianzen. For almost immediately thereafter, Jerome set about the translation and revision of Eusebius' Chronicle of world history.

But even before turning his hand to the Chronicle, Jerome had betrayed a considerable historical interest and insight in his Dialogue against the Luciferians⁵—disciples of Bishop Lucifer of Calaris, who had gone into schism over the question of receiving back into the Church the bishops guilty of defection at the Council of Rimini. Writing the Dialogue at Antioch in 378, Jerome utilizes the conversation between an orthodox Catholic and a Luciferian named Helladius to refute, one after another, the objections brought against granting pardon to the bishops who had already been admitted to penance at the Council of Alexandria in 362. He displays at once a complete mastery of the historical narratives of the Gospels, and in particular of the Acts of the Apostles. He manifests a thorough familiarity with the Acts of the councils of Nicea and of Rimini, as well as with the writings of Cyprian, Hilary and Tertullian.

Though this dialogue is an early work of St. Jerome's, it demonstrates at once his clear-cut appreciation of the role of tradition in explaining and supporting the Scriptures. In it he witnesses to the ecclesiastical patterns that go back to the very origins, concerning the sacraments, the role of the Church and of the episcopate, as well as to numerous liturgical practices.⁶ He likewise displays a concern for the history of heresy, from the days of the Jewish religion down through the earliest Christian heretics to his own day—a preoccupation that will be characteristic of all his future writings. And everywhere he points to historical sources, to trustworthy evidence, in support of his contentions. Thus he advises:

If anyone desires to learn further about these matters, let him consult the Acts of the Synod of Rimini, whence we ourselves have drawn these facts.… Should anyone think these things to have been made up by us, let him consult the public records. The archives of the Church are complete. And indeed, the memory of these things is still fresh. There are still men living who were present at this Synod [Rimini]. And, what decides the matter, the Arians themselves do not deny that these things happened as we report them… -.⁷

It seems really as a result of his stay in Constantinople (c. 380-381) that, along with his Scriptural interests, Jerome caught sight of the real meaning and indispensability of historical studies for the Scripture scholar. It was as a result of his contact with men like Apollinaris of Laodicea and Gregory Nazianzen, as well as of his wide reading in Origen, Irenaeus, and above all in Eusebius of Caesarea.⁸

Jerome had been brought up in the West in an age when historical writing had reached a low ebb. The pagan productions of the day, with the already mentioned exception of Ammianus Marcellinus, were a few epitomes and biographical surveys—the works of men like Eutropius, Aurelius Victor and Rufius Festus, along with the so-called Historia Augusta: mainly abridgements of Livy and conventional pictures of the Roman emperors, traceable to the imitation of Suetonius and Tacitus. For the most part, the age had lost the concept of the historian as a literary artist who gives a well-rounded picture of an epoch "in which the importance of individual persons and episodes are justly appraised as larger or smaller parts of a whole, and in which certain broad philosophic concepts serve as a guide through a maze of history and as an aid for the reader towards a true interpretation."⁹

In coming upon Eusebius' Chronicle, Jerome had been immediately struck by the vast sweep of its accomplishmient. For Eusebius had published a résumé of universal history from Adam down to the reign of Constantine, complete with chronological tables and references. It was really part of his Preparatio Evangelica, a vast work of synthesis that was to form a complete apology for the Christian religion.¹⁰ Jerome at once perceived the immensity and the utility of the résumé. Before him, Hilary of Poitiers, Eusebius of Vercelli and Chromatius of Aquileia had been exposed to this Greek ecclesiastical learning, but had apparently failed to appreciate its full significance. Jerome grasped its indispensability in permitting the Western Christian to orientate himself in the course of world history, and thus facilitate his study both of the Scriptures and of the milieu of profane knowledge. Hence his determination to translate the Chronicle, without, however, also doing into Latin the chronological tables which were really an adaptation from the chronographer, Julius Africanus (c. 240).

By way of preparation for his task, Jerome seems to have familiarized himself with his own Latin authors, in particular with Suetonius and Tacitus, and perhaps also with the epitome of Pompeius Trogus' Philippic History made by M. Junius Justinus in the third century. For the translation, while faithful to the original, contains numerous references introduced by Jerome as of interest to his Western readers. He begins his own preface to the translation by some remarkably sensible observations with regard to translation methods. He then set forth part of the difficulty of the task:

And to this difficulty [the unreality of a strictly literal rendition] which is common to all translation work, this further affects us, that this history is so complicated, having strange-sounding names, things not known to Latins, inexplicable numbers, critical marks intertwined with text and numerals, so that it is almost more difficult to explain the method of reading than it is to proceed to a notice of the reading.¹¹

He then explains his critical apparatus in which, while following the pattern set by Eusebius, he makes use of several columnns in recording contemporary reigns, but marks each with a different type of ink, so that the brief text of commentary on each particular event or personage may be lined up with the proper year to which it belongs. He concludes his preface with the remark:

I would rather have my readers satisfied, so that they may assign to its proper author the truth of the Greek [original], and may realize that those things which we have inserted on our own have been culled from the most reliable authors. It should be known that I have used in part both the assistance of a translator and of an amanuensis, so that I have given exact expression to the Greek, and have also injected into the story a good deal of-Roman history, which Eusebius, the original author of this book, did not do, not so much because he was ignorant of the latter—for he was a most leamed man—but because, writing for a Greek audience, he did not feel it necessary.

Thus, from Ninus and from Abraham down to the fall of Troy, it is a simple translation from the Greek. From Troy to the twentieth year of Constantine, many things have been added and changed round, which I have taken most carefully from Suetonius and from other illustrious historians. From the above-mentioned year of Constantine [325] down to the consulate of the august Caesars, Valentinian 11 and Valens [378], the whole is my own.¹²

In the beginning of his preface, Jerome makes some remark regarding the translation as an "opus tumultuarium" ¹³—but he is certainly exaggerating. For the complexity and the ingenuity with which he has the various tables of parallel reigns worked out belie any such thing as haste. However, as Helm has remarked of the interpolations regarding the literary figures of Latin antiquity in particular, Jerome must have jotted down annotations from Suetonius and the other authors on the margin of his copy of Eusebius' text.¹⁴ Then, under the confusion of his own revisions and rearrangement, a number of these additions tended to get misplaced. However, Jerome had no certain chronology regarding these ancient authors that he could follow without fear of error. There simply was no good Latin tradition dating these various writers. Thus are explained certain inconsistencies and apparent indecisions that Jerome is attempting to cover with his "tumultuarium."

In translating the Chronicle, Jerome, as he says, added much new material for the period beginning with the Trojan war. It has been recently suggested that he was following, in his arrangement, Justinus' epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus:¹⁵ so that while Jerome appears to be definitely paralleling his history to fit in with a philosophy of the Four Empires, he is influenced much more particularly by the secular current of thought than by the Biblical commentaries of Hippolytus, Tertullian and Origen upon the Prophets of the Old Testament, and in particular upon the Book of Daniel. This presupposes a thorough familiarity upon Jerome's part with Trogus, and with the current of Latin thought he represents, which indeed goes all the way back to Ennius, and is reflected in the chronographers and in Claudian. But although Jerome does point with scorn to the evils inherent in the Roman Empire, there seems to be lacking in his observations the definitely anti-imperial spirit and condemnatory approach that is characteristic of Trogus. Likewise, there is serious question as to Jerome's familiarity with this particular historian. He does not mention him until he is writing his own Commentary on the Prophet Daniel in 407,¹⁶ some twenty-seven years after his translation of the Chronicle. Then he is definitely influenced by the parade of authorities cited by Porphyry in his attack upon Daniel.

What seems to point to the influence of Trogus, however, is the fact that Jerome, departing from Eusebius' arrangement, outlines his history with the four great empires of Assyria, Persia, Greece and Rome succeeding each other in the second, or "guide," column of his manuscript. Like Trogus, he seems to have had considerable difficulty placing the Medes, whom, at this period, he did not consider one of the four principal imperial nations.¹⁷ Eusebius, not following this pattern, had left one hundred and eleven years after the fall of Assyria free, before beginning an account of the Persians. Jerome fills in the gap with the names of eight kings of the Medes, only four of whom Eusebius had mentioned in his text, though he had named the other four in the chronological preface to the work. In his own preface, Jerome merely mentions Suetonius and "other illustrious historians" as the source of his additions.¹⁸ Thus, though he is obviously conforming to a pattern other than that set by the original, it is still an open question as to whether he is being guided by his Biblical knowledge of Daniel and the commentators, or whether he is drawing from Trogus and the anti-imperial literature of the Augustan age.

The third section of Jerome's Chronicle, covering the period from A.D. 325 to 379, Jerome claims as his own, though here he leans heavily on Eutropius, the magister memoriae under Valens.¹⁹ In general, he follows the previous pattern, and is thus little more than a recorder of the principal happenings in the political world, following up the detailed accounts of the Roman kings, the evolution of the Republic and Empire, the dealings of the Roman legions with various frontier tribes and legions, as well as anecdotal and geographic material, that had characterized Jerome's additions to Eusebius' original. Considerable attention is naturally paid to the series of bishops and important religious events, a listing of the main Christian and pagan authors of the age, and a recording of such phenomena as earthquakes, famines, battles, and monstrosities.

The whole work is thus a prodigious storehouse of historical lore, not well integrated nor properly proportioned, it is true. Towards the end, Jerome indulges a number of personal judgments on men such as Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Peter of Alexandria that are far from the spirit of impartiality. But it did furnish both Jerome and his readers in the West with a magnificent opportunity to locate themselves in regard to world history. And it is written with considerable verve and attention to style, no matter how short the item or notice being set down. As Pére Cavallera remarks:

By relating the present to the past, it allowed for a continuous feeling of solidarity between generations. In linking sacred and profane history, it presented a double advantage. It confirmed the faithful in their conviction that their religion was the most noble, the most ancient and the most pure of all those creeds then cluttering the world; but, at the same time, in arousing, or in at least continuing, a sympathetic approach to profane history, it recalled for the reader the fact that, while a citizen of heaven, he was still a citizen of the Roman Empire, an heir to that ancient civilization of whose history the principal facts were here recalled for him. Hence it helped to prevent a loss of interest in the world, or a narrow isolationism from the things of the present.²⁰

The popularity of Jerome's translation of the Chronicle is well attested by the number of manuscripts in which it was circulated, and in its numerous continuations down through the centuries, beginning with that of Prosper of Aquitaine. Along with Augustine's City of God—which, incidentally, owed much to Jerome's translation—the Chronicle was the staple of world history upon which the Middle Ages were nourished for over a thousand years.

Jerome had spoken of a "broader history" of the Christian age that he was contemplating, as he brought his translation of Eusebius to a close. But his Scriptural and controversial activities from now on would preclude any such strictly historical undertaking. His sojourn in Rome from 382 to 385 was the occasion for his applying himself to issuing a new Latin version of the four Gospels, collated from various Greek manuscripts, along with the older Latin versions. The evidence thus afforded of Jerome's interest in textual problems has been well set forth by K. Hulley in his study of the "Principles of textual criticism known to St. Jerome,"²¹ wherein he ranges up and down the avenues of both lower and higher criticism, and, by copious quotation from the prefaces and commentaries, demonstrates Jerome's genuine competence in these fields.

Jerome, of course, from his earliest days had been a great bibliophile. Particularly under the influence of his experiences at the great Christian library center of Caesarea, where he seems first to have actually examined Origen's Hexapla, his interest and his efforts in obtaining correct texts of the Scriptures, properly attributed and attested to, is paramount in all his endeavors. He became extremely aware of the necessity of coping with the original languages, and of using them properly—thus his own rather painful mastery of Hebrew, his excursions into Syriac, Coptic and Aramaic.

Jerome seems to have been particularly sensitive about the matter of knowing a language thoroughly, not only hiring, at considerable cost, a rabbi for lessons in Hebrew, but keeping an observant ear ever open to particularities and similarities in idiom and dialect, and between languages themselves, in the course of his travels and his association with peoples from all over the then known world. Thus, as a young man travelling through Gaul, he declares that he has paid close attention to the Celtic languages spoken by the several barbarian peoples settled round about Treves and Normandy. Years later, when writing his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, he mentions how closely the tongues of the numerous tribes in the Near East resembled the speech of the Gauls:

Whence we infer that the Galatians … have their own language, which is practically the same as that of the peoples round Treves. Nor does it matter that they have corrupted it to a certain extent, for the Africans have changed the Phoenician language in good part, and Latin itself is modified in each age and clime.… ²²

It is possible, of course, that Jerome, knowing a good deal about the history of these tribes and their wanderings, claims a trifle too much for his own general experience—but at least he betrays a considerable interest in the subject.

Jerome too notes the wealth of historical detail afforded by monuments and other relics of the past, of various types and proveniences. Thus his early interest in the Roman catacombs; but likewise, his awareness of the "Pythagorean Monuments" scattered up and down the coast of Italy, witnessing to the prevalence of that particular philosophy and superstition in the pre-Christian ages, as Jerome points out for Rufinus.²³ In the matter of geographical detail, of place names, and of origins, he does not hesitate to correct his own opinions, garnered from his reading, by the actual state of affairs, as he came to see it in his travels.²⁴ Jerome was thus very well equipped as an historian, not only well-travelled, but supremely aware of the useful arts that contribute to the truth and accuracy of any attempt to capture and delimit what has taken place in the past. On the whole, he manifests a critical eye and an ability to evaluate data that are well beyond the stature of his age—with the sole exception, perhaps, of his contemporary chronicler, Sulpicius Severus.

In Jerome's controversial works, for example, historical references, appeals to tradition, citations, of ancient authors abound, as well as the dramatic interest arising from story sources, and frequent attempts are made at clearing up involved problems and difficulties through the exercise of critical judgment. He exhibits great care in quoting his adversaries verbatim before smothering them under an avalanche of facts, figures and vituperation. In his Adversus Helvidium,²⁵ he devotes the main sections to the problems of the virginity of the Blessed Mother and the subsidiary questions of the "brothers of the Lord." In ferreting out parallel references and cases by way of proof, supplementary to his main argument, he roams all over the Old Testament, demonstrating at once his mastery of that great document and his recognition of its value as an historical source. He appeals then to profane literature and history. His final decision is rendered with reference to "the whole series of ancient writers: Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and many another apostolic and eloquent man who wrote volumes full of wisdom on these same matters against Ebion, Theodotus, Byzantius and Valentine,."²⁶

In his defense of virginity against the attacks of Jovinian, having exhausted his Scriptural references, Jerome turns to secular literature, exclaiming: "I will now run briefly through the Greek, Latin, and barbarian historians, and will prove that virginity has always been held to be the chief glory of chastity…"²⁷ And he reels off a host of fables, stories and anecdotes culled from Porphyry and Josephus, wherein he cites Herodotus, Strabo, Xenophon, Ovid, Virgil, etc., and reaches from Diana of the Ephesians and Dido of Carthage to the Milesians and the Gymnosophists of India (Ethiopia). He finishes with a catalogue of the evils of married life that is really staggering in its mounting vulgarity, but, as always, he calls upon Plutarch, Seneca, Plato, Aristotle and, in particular, the De nuptiis of Theophrastus—again via the De abstinentia of Porphyry—for the testimony and justification.²⁸

In the second part of the Adversus Jovinianum, Jerome presents a myriad of parallels and contrasts between the customs, laws, eating habits and peculiarities of every nation and people then known to mankind, a feat that would bear comparison with the work of one of our modern sociological encyclopedists, though again, for the most part, Jerome is quoting from Porphyry without benefit of citation.²⁹

Jerome was engaged in two other historical tasks during the course of his earlier career: the composition of several Vitae patrum and of the eulogies of a number of his friends. The former—the lives of Paul the Hermit, of Malchus and of Hilarion—are in the nature of edifying stories built in good part upon legend and hearsay that Jerome gathered from among the desert fathers, but having certain bases in fact. Jerome shows himself quite insistent as to the historical character of Paul, whom he nominates as the first hermit and the predecessor of St. Anthony, though he admits that Anthony is properly venerated as the Father of Monasticism as such.

In writing his preface to the Life of Hilarion, Jerome says explicitly:

In attempting this work, I contemn the words of my evil-wishers who, having once quarrelled with my Paul, will now try to detract from my Hilarion. To the former they objected on the score of his "solitary life"; against the latter, they will bring complaint that he was "too socially inclined"—maintaining that he who was never seen simply never existed; and he who was seen often did not amount to anything…³⁰

Despite the fact that Jerome follows closely the Quintilian-prescribed form of encomium, and that he refers to centaurs and other monsters in his Vita Pauli, he does place the "first hermit" in a strictly historical setting. Throughout the work he strives to give the impression that what he is relating is for the most part factual, though obviously intended as an edifying advertisement for the monastic state in which Jerome is so primarily concerned.³¹ The same can be said for his Vita Hilarionis, based, as he maintains, upon conversations with St. Epiphanius, who knew the hermit intimately.³²

In regard to the Vita Malchi, there is some appearance of verisimilitude, it being the story of an incident in the life of a monk captured by the Saracens, and finally saved through the instrumentality of a lion guarding the entrance to a cave in which he had taken refuge from pursuit—this latter incident, or course, being a most unfortunate circumstance as far as historical criticism is concerned. But it is really capable of being lived down.³³

These Vitae are extremely well-written narratives. They pay close attention to geographical detail and give evidence of being linked to the history of the times. Shot through as they are with demons and monsters, they present a problem with which Weingarten and Winter, Dölger and Schiweitz have wrestled at considerable length. The outcome of their studies seems to be that there was a hyperconsciousness of demonology among the early desert fathers and, at the same time, a tendency towards overcredulity in regard to these and other such phenomena.³⁴ It gravely affected even such realists as Jerome and Augustine. But Jerome had set out to write true biographies in keeping with the standards of the times. From a literary viewpoint, from a monastic-propagandist viewpoint, and from an historical viewpoint, he succeeded, despite the rigidity of form imposed by convention and the distraction of bizarre episodes.

Of a more reliable historical character are Jerome's eulogies of a number of his friends, written by way of consolation to their loved ones, but also as a record and testimonial of their saintly lives. This is particularly true of his "Letters" concerning Blesilla and Paula, Eustochium, Fabiola and Marcella, Nepotianus and Nebridius. While outlining the main historical facts, and apparently eschewing the loci communes, Jerome lays great stress upon the practice of Christian virtue to which these heroes and heroines of his were wholly committed—in the case of Nepotianus, swinging into a characterization of the ideal young priest; and utilizing the life of Paula as a model for the Christian maiden. All is done very elegantly, and with sufficient detail to render posterity an exceptionally clear picture of the life of these well-to-do, ascetically inclined devotees and acquaintances of his.³⁵

That Jerome was still thinking in terms of a full-scale historical work shortly after his permanent settlement in Bethlehem in 386 or 387 is evident from his preface to the Vita Malchi, wherein he spoke of the "larger history" he was then contemplating. Despite his good intentions, however, this projected history never saw the light of day. In its place, Jerome found himself more and more absorbed in Scriptural studies.

Writing to Paulinus in 395, Jerome expatiated at length upon the preparation necessary for a proper appreciation of the "word of God." He describes the pains taken by secular authors to obtain a proper understanding of the world about them:

We read in the older histories how men wandered over whole provinces, approached new peoples, crossed the seas, in order that they might see for themselves what they had read in books.… Thus Pythagoras, to see the sages of Memphis; thus Plato laboriously traversed Egypt … and, for the sake of Archytas of Tarentine, the coast of Italy formerly called Magna Graecia, that he who was a master and a power in Athens … might become a foreigner and disciple, preferring in a modest fashion to learn, rather than impudently to pour forth his own.… We read that a man came from the ends of the earth to see Titus Livy.… And Apollonius, whether the magician, as it is commonly thought, or the philosopher, as the Pythagoreans maintain, entered Persia, crossed the Caucasus, the lands of the Scythians and Massagetes … penetrated India … and came to the Brahmins, that he might listen to Hiarcas, seated on a throne of gold, drinking the waters of the Tantalus and expatiating upon nature, morals and the course of the stars.… He travelled thence by way of Babylonia, Chaldea, the land of the Medes, Assyrians, Parthians, Syrians, Phoenicians, Arabs and Palestine to return to Alexandria and enter Ethiopia, that he might there see the Gymnosophists.…³⁶

Thus making a vivid resume of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana written by Philostratus,³⁷ Jerome hurries on to discuss St. Paul and the Christian heroes. He continues:

I have run through these things briefly, that you may understand that one cannot embark upon the Sacred Scriptures without preparation and a guide pointing out the way. I will not pass over the grammarians, rhetoricians, philosophers, geometricians, dialecticians, musicians, astrologers and medical men, whose knowledge is most useful for us mortals, and is divided into three disciplines: evidence, method and practice.

I will take up the minor arts, which are controlled not so much by "word" as by the hand. Farmers, bricklayers, builders, the hewers of metals and wood, wool-makers, clothiers, etc., who put together various furnishings and meaner products, just cannot become what they desire to be without the aid of an instructor.

            Quod medicorum estpromittunt medici, tractant fabrilia fabri.

Alone the art of the Scriptures is one that all indiscriminately claim for themselves:

scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim.38

Then, pausing briefly to lacerate the fabricators of the centos of Homer and Virgil, Jerome proceeds to outline the nature and intent of the various books of the Old and New Testament.

For some time, then, Jerome had been determined to retranslate the Old Testament, at first by a revision of the Septuagint, but then directly from the Hebrew, and to provide commentaries and emendations for the whole body of the Scriptures. In so doing, his prefaces to the different books provide a course in lower and higher criticism, in paleography, diplomatic and heuristic, whereby he proves himself master of many of the disciplines ancillary to the competent historian.³⁹

In the midst of this new Scripture work, Jerome paused once more for a strictly historical exercise. Ever since his translation of Eusebius' Chronicle he had felt the need of a good nomenclator, or handbook of Christian authors, that would at once parallel Suetonius' and the other secular manuals, and serve as an inspiration and justification of the Christian coming-of-age in the literary field.

For an Imperial official and friend of his, Flavius Dexter by name, Jerome drew up his De viris illustribus,⁴⁰ a list of 135 authors, from the Apostles down to himself, whose works or reputations had been preserved as part of the Christian tradition, including several pagans and heretics whose productions held a special interest for the Christian scholar: Philo, Josephus, Seneca and Justin of Tiberias.

There is nothing particularly original about the De viris. As both Sychowski and Bemouilli were at great pains to show, Jerome takes the first seventy-eight authors almost verbatim from Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, filling in but a few minor details on his own.⁴¹ As a matter of fact, he has read very few of these authors, though he gives the impression that he is familiar with most of them at first hand. But Jerome had to get the information from somewhere! And he is tremendously more self-reliant for the authors of his own times, including such contemporaries as Basil, Ambrose, Rufinus, and Hilary.⁴² It is very easy to be overcritical of such apparent "plagiarizing," if the historian of today fails to realize that Jerome's procedure was not only in keeping with the temper of his age, but was also about the only thing he could do, lacking the tremendous facilities at the disposal of the critical historian of modern times. The copious use of footnotes today is, after all, hardly more than a mechanism to cover up a procedure that in its essentials differs from Jerome's but little.

The last of Jerome's 135 notices is given over to his own literary productions down to the year 392—and shows him off at the age of forty-five as a man who has already definitely made his way in the Christian literary world, and who felt considerably conscious of that fact.

Historically speaking, the book is most valuable for its effect upon the Christian consciousness of the day—the literary notices for the men of the fourth century are, of course, invaluable—-but the main impact of the work was the fact that it demonstrated the coming of age of Christian scholarship. It was actually the first handbook of Christian literature, and served as a model throughout the ages from Gennadius and Isidore down to Trithemius, Cave and St. Robert Bellarmine—a guide and a reservoir for the current of literary awareness from the sixth to the sixteenth century.

The question as to what historians Jerome had actually read is a most interesting and complex one. Pierre Courcelle maintains that as far, at least, as the Greek authors are concerned, he had read only those that would be directly useful to him in the study of the Scriptures; and that, therefore, when Jerome lines up a list such as: Hermippius the Peripatetic, Antigonus of Carystos, Satyrus, Aristexenes the musician, Apollonius, etc., he is really citing them from the now lost preface to Suetonius. Even Thucydides and Polybius were hardly more than names to him. However, he had read a great deal of Herodotus. Xenophon he knew both in Cicero's translations and in the original, at least for the Cyropedia. He had first-hand knowledge of Philo. But his real picture of the world from an historical viewpoint comes from Josephus, whom he must have known in good part by heart. He was also well acquainted with the works of Porphyry, mainly, of course, through Origen and Methodius. But he makes such frequent and complete use of the De abstinentia of that great anti-Christian antagonist that he simply must have read it.⁴³ As far back as 1872, of course, Luebeck indicated most of this.⁴⁴ And Jerome's own contemporary friend and foe, Rufinus of Aquileia, had long previously blurted out a similar accusation: "Indeed he [Jerome] sprays Aristides and Chrysippus, Empedocles and other names of Greek authors like smoke or clouds before his readers' eyes, that he may appear leamed and of wide reading.… "⁴⁵

As for the Latin historians, it is quite certain that Jerome had first-hand acquaintance with most of them—e.g., Sallust, Livy, Caesar, Suetonius, etc.—for they were used as school texts, along with the poets. He seems to have used Pompeius Trogus and his epitomist, Justinus; he certainly had an acquaintance with Eutropius, upon whom he bases most of his continuation of Eusebius' Chronicle. Hence he should also have known the lesser chronographers and court historians, such as Sextus Aurelius, Rufius Festus, and the "Epitomes" of the Caesars.⁴⁶ Jerome can be very frank with regard to his own testimony concerning these things, as he is in the prologue to the second book of his Commentary on Galatians:

Marcus Varro, a most diligent observer of all antiquity, and others who have imitated him, have handed down much about this people [the Galatians] that is worthy of being recalled. But because we have proposed not to introduce into the temple of God the uncircumcised—and as I may simply confess, it is now many years since I have ceased to read these things—I will merely quote the words of our own Lactantius.… ⁴⁷

In his preface to book three, he likewise assures Paula and Eustochium, for whose benefit he is writing:

You yourselves know that for more than fifteen years [i.e., since the famous dream mentioned in his Letter to Eustochium #22] I have never had in my hands a copy of Cicero, Virgil, or of any other author of pagan letters. And if indeed while I talk, something of these authors slips out, it is due to a recalling as through a cloudy dream of the past.… ⁴⁸

Thus it becomes most difficult to decide when Jerome is really quoting from among his Latin authors—for his memory was really prodigious. "Dye the wool once purple," he had chided Rufinus, "and what waters will wash it clean?"⁴⁹

It is, however, in his Scriptural works that Jerome gives clearest indication of his historical talents and critical tastes. Beginning with his Hebraic Questions in Genesis⁵⁰ he manifests a complete, fairly well-integrated, and comprehensive picture of the past. It is shot through with mistakes, of course, owing to the faulty state of historical knowledge and studies of the day. It stems from Josephus, Origen, Philo, Porphyry, and Eusebius, although Jerome not infrequently tries to give the impression that it is coming directly from Thucydides, Berosus, Plutarch, Dichaearchus, Alexander Polyhistor, Callinicus, Suetonius, etc. But the fact is that, in itself it manifests what was evidently a rather clear picture in Jerome's mind. It begins with the origins of various peoples scattered over the farthest reaches of the then known world, and stretches from the outposts of the Caucasus and India to the fastnesses of Africa, and the northemmost outposts of Britain. Thus Jerome amplifies Josephus on Genesis:

To Japhet son of Noah, were born seven sons who possessed the land of Asia from Amanus and Taurus to Syria Coeli, and the mountains of Cilicia down to the river Tanain; in Europe, as far as Gadira, leaving their names upon both places and people. Of these latter, very many changed; yet many also remained as they were. The Galatians are of Gomer; the Scythians of Magog; the Medes of Madai; of lavan are the lones or Greeks, whence the lonian sea. Of Thubal are the Iberians, also called Spaniards.… Of Mosoch, the Cappadocians: whence one of their cities is called Mazeca to this day.… Of Thiras, the Thracians.… I know that a certain man [St. Ambrose of Milan] has narrated the history of the Goths, who have been recently bacchanalizing in our lands, as of Gog and Magog, thus characterizing them by their present activities, and as they are referred to in Ezechiel. Whether this is a true interpretation or not will soon be seen by the finish of their war. But certainly the learned Goths themselves have in the past rather referred to themselves as of the Getes than of Gog and Magog…⁵¹

The Hebraic Questions in Genesis is really part of a trilogy, made up of a translation of Eusebius' Book of Place Names,⁵² together with his Onomasticon, or "Book of Hebrew Names,"⁵³ originally attributed to Philo and Origen. Unfortunately, all three books are vitiated to a certain extent by the ancient pseudoscience of etymology, in which Jerome is an especially great offender. But, at the same time, they represent a considerable amount of personal erudition on his part, particularly in the elaborations on the geography of Palestine and its environs supplied by his own personal knowledge—information that is still useful, and that, incidentally, proved most timely for the pilgrims then beginning to resort to the Holy Land in such great numbers.

Jerome's commentaries, beginning with those on Abdias and Ecclesiastes, running through the attention he gives to St. Paul in Galatians, Philemon, Ephesians and Titus, as also his Matthew, along with the minor Prophets, and Ezechiel, Isaias, Jeremias and Daniel are a great amalgam of historical and Scriptural lore. He hesitates to begin a commentary unless he has Origen at his side—he was accused even in his own day, particularly in regard to the Twelve Minor Prophets, of having lifted from Origen bodily⁵⁴—yet, to say there is little that is original in his work would be simply false. For Jerome paints vivid pictures, using his immense knowledge as a background. Frequently he is quoting verbatim, without mention of his source; but, as likely as not, having once made a passage completely his own, he could not then distinguish between his own thoughts and those of his reading. Yet you cannot read through these commentaries without being struck with the man's tremendous historical consciousness, no matter whence he may be garnering his material.

Thus in the Commentary on Isaias, Jerome insists over and over again, particularly in the first six chapters, that Isaias vividly foretold the tragic events that would come upon Judea under Titus and Hadrian."⁵⁵ He maintains that he is not unaware that the city of Jerusalem had undergone other sieges in the course of the centuries. "But under the Romans, the whole of Judea was devastated, its cities put to the torch, and to this day the foreigner exploits the land." And he turns to Josephus to demonstrate that it is with this last spoliation that the prophecy has been carried out to the minutest detail. He is likewise insistent that all interpretation begin with history: "And we say this, not condemning the tropological sense, but because the spiritual interpretation must follow the order of history, which, many forgetting, they wander off into the most obvious errors against the Scriptures."⁵⁶ But as history is made up of many facets which succeed one another in the course of time, it belongs to the ingenuity of the commentator to discover the actual burden of events that carried out a particular prophecy.

When treating of a warning addressed to the king of Assyria, for example, Jerome insists upon remaining in the domain of ancient history: "From the context," he writes, "it is obvious that this applies to Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians." Several authors thought that Isaias 17:7, pertaining to the oracle uttered against Damascus, had received its realization in the time of Christ, when the Kingdom of the Savior replaced the already destroyed realm of Damascus. "A pious wish of the interpreters," is Jerome's comment, "but not in accordance with historical actuality." "We ourselves will follow the historical order, in the endeavor to cap off with historical fact an edifice begun on historical foundations."⁵⁷

Jerome was really the first author of antiquity to question the story of the origin of the Septuagint, at least thrice expressing more than polite doubt and annoyance at the credulity of his contemporaries:

For I know not who was the first author to construct out of a falsehood the seventy cells at Alexandria, in which they [the translators] were supposed to have all written the same things, though separated from each other, since neither Aristeas, one of the coterie around Ptolemaus himself, nor, much later, Josephus makes mention of any such things. But rather, they tell us that these men, gathered in a large basilica, wrote down a translation, not a prophecy … unless perchance we are to believe that Cicero translated the Oeconomicon of Xenophon, the Protagoras of Plato, and the Pro Ctesiphon of Demosthenes under the influence of the "rhetorical spirit.… Do we then condemn these older writers? Not at all.… For they translated before the coming of Christ; and what they did not under-stand, they translated in dubious phrases. But we are writing after His passion and resurrection … hence are handling not prophecy but history. It is one thing to describe what you have merely heard, and quite another what you have actually seen.… ⁵⁸

Jerome approaches the Scriptures as a strictly historical document, a fact which he makes clear in the following passage, where he is quoting almost verbatim from Origen:

Does anyone believe in God the Creator? He cannot believe unless he first believe that those things are true which are written about His saints, viz.: Adam was made of plasma by God; Eve, fabricated from a rib in his side; Enoch translated; Noah alone saved from amidst a shipwrecked world.… These and the rest that is written in Scriptures, unless one believe the whole of it, he cannot believe in the God of the saints. Nor can he be brought to the faith of the Old Testament unless he can prove to his own satisfaction all these facts which history records regarding the patriarchs, prophets, and other outstanding men.… ⁵⁹

He insists, again and again, that the Scriptures cannot be understood unless one start from an historical foundation. He knows, however, that

Many things are spoken of in the Scriptures in accordance with common opinion at the time when they took place, and not according to the real truth of the matter. Thus, Joseph is spoken of in the Gospel as the "father of the Lord," Mary herself, who knew she had conceived of the Holy Ghost, telling her Son, "Behold! Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing."⁶⁰

As has been seen, Professor Swain recently maintained that Jerome took at least part of his approach to the over-all picture of history from the anti-imperial literature represented by Pompeius Trogus' Philippic History, rather than from the commentaries on the Apocalypse and on Daniel by Hippolytus, Irenaeus and Origen. But there is great difficulty in admitting that he was being so immediately influenced by an historian who was for Jerome but an obscure author. This is particularly true when one reflects that running through Jerome's thought there is a definite idea of progress in history that is bound up with a strictly Jewish concept of divine providence. For all the philosophical bent of Thucydides, Herodotus and Polybius, there was no real over-all plan to their idea of fate, certainly no integrated philosophy giving a spiritual as well as a cosmic meaning to the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms.⁶¹ This latter was strictly the creation of the Jewish Scriptures, beginning with the story of the creation in Genesis, and being elaborated in set terms by the major and minor Prophets.⁶² It is Eusebius who first appears to feel the tremendous swing of this trend of thought; and it is from Eusebius primarily that Jerome gathers his principal ideas, however much Trogus may have been on his mind.

Much of the burden of Jerome's Commentary on Daniel is in reality an attack upon Porphyry. The latter maintained that the book of Daniel was written not earlier than the time of the Machabees, about 165 B.C., and that, instead of being a prophecy, it was really a description of events up to the reign of Antiochus, of which there remained an historical record. Jerome makes use of all his predecessors—Origen, Methodius, Eusebius⁶³—and hammers away at the position taken by the great pagan adversary of Christianity, not without some effect, though he finds the learning of Porphyry formidable. Thus, in his preface:

To understand the latter parts of Daniel, a multiple history of the Greeks is necessary, namely: Sutorius, Callinicus, Diodorus, Hieronymus, Polybius, Poseidonius, Claudius, Theonis and Adronicus called Alypius, whom Porphyry declares he is following; in like manner also, Josephus and those whom Josephus quotes, and particularly our own Livy and Pompeius Trogus and Justinus, who narrate the whole history of the final vision.… ⁶⁴

But he gives Porphyry fair play throughout the commentary, juxtaposing his interpretation to that of the general run of Christian commentators:

Thus far the historical order has been followed, and between Porphyry and ourselves there is no quarrel. The rest, continuing down to the end of the volume, he regards as of Antiochus.… Our commentators … refer all this to the anti-Christ.… ⁶⁵

But let this all be said of Antiochus. Wherein does that harm our religion? … Let them then say, Who is this "stone which is cut from the mountain without hands; which has grown into a great mountain and filled the earth, and assumed a fourfold form"? Who is this son of man, who is to come with the clouds, and to stand before the ancient of days, and to be given a kingdom to which there will be no end, while all the people, tribes and tongues shall serve him? Porphyry avoids these things which are quite obvious, and asserts that they are prophesied about the Jews, whom we know to be in servitude to this day.… ⁶⁶

Jerome himself, of course, refers this prophecy directly to Christ, the Light of the World.⁶⁷

On the larger question of a pattern or direction in history, Jerome feels there is evidently a close connection between divine providence and the paths of human history, and that this is discernible through the fulfilment of events foretold by the prophets of old. But he seems to preserve a fairly open mind in his interpretations.⁶⁸ While his concept of the sweep of the historical process subsumes the rise and fall of the four great empires, there is not a deterministic nor an apocalyptic tinge to his thinking, least of all a millenarian twist. He maintains that the corruption and downfall of these great states has been due to pride and rapacity on the part of their rulers and people. Hence he is not surprised to see signs of disaster coming upon the Rome of his day.⁶⁹

Yet in his Commentary on Isaias, speaking of the section where the prophet describes the "wolf lying down with the lamb, and the leopard with the goat" (11:16) Jerome says:

And this we see in our own day in the Church, where the rich and the poor, the powerful and the humble, kings and private people, mingle together, and are governed by young men whom we call apostles, and apostolic men, unskilled in speech but not in wisdom.⁷⁰

Again, in his comment on the famous sixtieth chapter of Isaias (I off.), Jerome says:

This can be taken either in a material or in a spiritual sense. If in a material, we see the Roman Caesars bending their necks to the yoke of Christ, building churches at the public expense, and leveling the fiats of law against the persecutions of the gentiles and the attacks of heretics.… Although we now see these things coming to pass in the Church of today, they will be more fully carried out upon the consummation of the world, in the second coming of the Savior.⁷¹

As an historian, then, Jerome did have well in mind the necessity of possessing a vast sweep of the knowledge of antiquity. Insofar as his main interests were governed by the Sacred Scriptures, he confined his immediate endeavors to keeping himself abreast of works needful in that field—not, however, without at least making pretense of being well acquainted with all the literature of antiquity. In the long run he makes fairly critical use of most of his material, and he is as honest as any man of the deep past in acknowledging his borrowings—or failing to do so. But he did have a magnificent grasp of the history of civilizations as known to his day. He had even figured out for himself an entire Weltanschauung, completed by a chronological analysis of his world. Thus he ends his supplement to Eusebius' Chronicle:

Up to the consulate of Valentinian and Valens II [A.D. 378], all the years:

1. From the 15th year of Tiberias and the preaching of our Lord Jesus Christ amount to 351;
2. From the second year of Darius, King of the Persians, at the time when the temple of Jerusalem was rebuilt, equal 899;
3. From the first Olympiad, the time when Isaias was preaching among the Jews, amount to 1,155;
4. From Solomon and the first building of the Temple, amount to 1,411;
5. From the capture of Troy, at which time Samson was alive among the Jews, amount to 1,161;
6. From the time of Moyses and of Cecrops, first king of Attica, equal 1,890;
7. From Abraham and the reign of Ninus and Semiramidis, equal 2,395.

Thus the whole course of time, from Abraham to the above-mentioned date, contains 2,395 years; and from the Flood until the time of Abraham, there are thought to have been 942 years; and from Adam to the Flood, 2,242 years. Thus from Adam down to the fourteenth year of the reign of Valens … the whole course of years amounts to 5,579⁷²

Notes

¹PL, 22, 53.

²Chronici canones (ed. J. Fotheringham, London, 1923), 5.

³ Jer., Ep. 5, 2.

⁴ Jer., Ep. 15, 3.

⁵PL, 23, 155-82.

⁶ Cf. P. Batiffol, "Les sources de I'Altercatio Luciferiani et Orthodoxi," Miscel. Geronimiana (Rome, 1921), 97ff.

⁷PL, 23, 172.

⁸ F. Cavallera, Saint Jérôme, sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris, 1922), I, 55-62; cf. P. Courcelle, Les lettres grecques en Occident (Paris, 1943), 84-86 (Irenaeus), 88-100 (Origen), 103-105 (Eusebius), 38 and 104 (Gregory Nazianzen).

⁹ Cf. M. Laistner, "Some Reflections on Latin Historical Writing in the V Century," Class. Phil. 35 (1941), 241-58.

¹⁰Ibid., 243.

¹¹ Cf. F. Foakes-Jackson, Eusebius Pamphili (Cambridge, 1933), 142ff.

¹²Chronici canones, 2.

¹³Ibid., 4-5.

¹⁴ R. Helm, Hieronymus Zusitze in Eusebius Chronik [Philologus, Supplem b. 21, Heft II] 92, 95.

¹⁵ J. Swain, "Theory of the Four Monarchies: Opposition History under the Roman Empire," Class. Phil. 35 (1940), 1-21.

¹⁶ Jer., Comm. in Dan., Prologus (PL, 25, 494).

¹⁷ Cf. Swain, op. cit., 19.

¹⁸Chron. canon., 5.

¹⁹ Cf. R. Helm, "Hieronymus und Eutrop," Rhein. Museum 76 (1927), 138.

²⁰ F. Cavallera, Saint Jérôme, I, 66.

²¹Harv. Stud. in Class. Phil. 55 (1944), 87-109; id., "Light cast by St. Jerome on certain paleological problems," ibid., 54 (1943), 83-92.

²²PL, 26, 357; cf. V. Sofer, "Das Hieronymus Zeugnis über die Sprachen der Galater und Trevirer," Zeit. f Klas: Phil. 55 (1937), 148-158.

²³ Jer., Adv. Ruf., III (PL, 23, 485).

²⁴ Cf. F. Stummer, "Corvallis, Mambre und Verwandtes," Jour. Pal. Or. Soc., 1932, 6-21; id., "Die Berwertung Palastinas bei Hier.," Oriens Christ., 1935, 60-74.

²⁵PL, 23, 183-206.

²⁶Ibid., 17 (PL, 23, 202); cf. P. Courcelle, op. cit., 79-81.

²⁷Adv. Jov., I, 41 (PL, 23, 270).

²⁸ p. Courcelle, op. cit., 60-62, where he points out the studies proving Jerome's main sources to be the De matrimonio of Seneca, the Gamika Paraggelmata of Plutarch, and a lost tract of Porphyry whence Jerome drew his citations of Aristotle, and the De nuptiis of Theophrastus.

²⁹Adv. Jov., II (PL, 23, 307-10); Courcelle, op. cit., 62-3; E. Bickel, Diatribe in Senecae philos. fragm., I (Leipzig, 1915), 395-420.

³⁰Vita Hilarionis, I (PL, 23, 29).

³¹Vita Pauli (PL, 23, 17-28).

³²Vita Hil. (PL, 23, 29-54).

³³Vita Malchi (PL, 23, 53-60).

³⁴ Cf. O. Bardenhewer, Gesch. d. altk. Lit. 3 (Fri.-in. B., 1912), 638-639; S. Schiweitz, Das morgenländische Mönchtum 3 (Mainz, 1938), 214-20.

³⁵ O. Bardenhewer, op. cit., 639-40.

³⁶ Jer., Ep. 53 (Ad. Paulin.).

³⁷ Cf. Courcelle, op. cit., 65-6.

³⁸Ibid.

³⁹ Cf. W. Stade, Hieronymus in proemiis (Rost., 1925); F. Stummer, Einiführung in die Latein. Bibel (Paderborn, 1928).

⁴⁰ Jer., De vir. illus. (ed. E. Richardson, Leipzig, 1896).

⁴¹ C. Bernoulli, Die Schriftstellerkatalog des Hier. (Fri.-in B., 1895); St. von Sychowski, Hieronymus als Litterarhistoriker (Münster, 1894); A. Feder, Studien z. Schriftstellerkatalog des hl. Hier. (Leipzig, 1927).

⁴² p. Courcelle, op. cit., 78-111.

⁴³Ibid., 66-78; on Josephus, 71ff.

⁴⁴ E. Luebeck, Hieronymus quos noverit scriptores … (Leipzig, 1872).

⁴⁵ Ruf., Apol., II, 7 (PL, 21, 588).

⁴⁶ Cf. notes 17 and 19.

⁴⁷Comm. in Gal., II, prol. (PL, 26, 353).

⁴⁸Ibid., III, prol. (399).

⁴⁹ Jer., Apol., I, 30 (PL, 23, 422).

⁵⁰Quaest. Hebr. in Gen. (PL, 23, 935-1010). Cf. Courcelle, op. cit., 67, n. 3; F. Cavallera, "Les quaestiones in Gen. de S. Jérôme et de S. Augustin," Misc. Agost., II (Rome, 1931), 360-72.

⁵¹Quaest. Hebr. in Gen., 10, 2 (PL, 23, 950-1).

⁵²Lib. de Nomen. Hebr. (PL, 23, 771-858).

⁵³Onomastica Sacra (ed. f. Wutz, Texte und Untersuchungen ii [41]).

⁵⁴In Mich., II (PL, 25, 1189); Courcelle, op. cit., 95-6.

⁵⁵Comm. in Isaiam (PL, 24, 9-687); cf. 30-31.

⁵⁶Ibid., 5:13 (158-9).

⁵⁷Ibid., 17:12 (177).

⁵⁸Praef in Pentat. (PL, 28, 151); cf. also Adv. Ruf, II, 25 (PL, 23, 470); Comm. in Ezech. 6:12 (PL, 25, 55).

⁵⁹Comm. in Ep. ad Philem. 4ff. (PL, 26, 609); the passage is taken almost verbatim from Origen, cf. E. Dorsch, "Aug. und Hier. über die Wahrheit der bibl. Geschichte," Zeit. f kat. Theol. 35 (1911) 641 and 646.

⁶⁰Comm. in Jerem. 28: 10-11 (PL, 24, 855).

⁶¹ Cf. C. Dawson, "St. Augustine and His Age," A Monument to St. Augustine (New York, 1930), 44-5.

⁶² Cf. W. Irwin, "The Hebrews," The Adventures of Ancient Man (Chicago, 1946), 322-3.

⁶³ P. Courcelle, op. cit., 63-4; J. Lataix, "Le commentaire de saint Jérôme sur Daniel," Rev. d'hist, et de litt. relig., II (1897), 164-173.

⁶⁴Comm. in Dan., praef. (PL, 25, 494).

⁶⁵Ibid., 11:21 (565).

⁶⁶Ibid., 11:44-5 (573-4).

⁶⁷Ibid., (574); cf. Comm. in Jerem. 19:10-11 (PL, 24, 801-2).

⁶⁸Comm. in Isaiam 24:17 (PL, 24, 258-86).

⁶⁹Comm. in Dan. 3:40 (PL, 25, 504): "Sicut enim in principio nihil Romano imperio fortius et durius fuit, ita in fine rerum nihil imbecillius; quando et in bellis civilibus, et adversum diversas nationes, aliarum gentium indegimus auxilio …"; cf. ibid., 7:8; (551).

⁷⁰Comm. in Is. 11:6ff. (PL, 24, 148); Ibid., 5:23-25 (PL, 24, 187-8).

⁷¹Ibid., 60:1 0ff. (593).

⁷²Chronici canones, 332.