Publication. Two circumstances conduced to the vividness and importance of this series of letters. One of these is the fact that no distinct line separated private documents from those designed for publication. In the Catalogue of his works (De Vir. Ill. 135)1 he says: "Of the Letters to Paula and Eustochium, the number is infinite: I write them every day." And, when he became celebrated, he says (79) that whatever he wrote was at once laid hold of and published, alike by friends and enemies. We have therefore frequently his most confidential utterances; while on the other hand his letters frequently pass into treatises, and he turns to address others than those to whom he is writing (59, 273, 274). But the process of publication was precarious; so that between Letters xlvi. and xlvii. there is a gap of seven years (386-93) without any letter. The other circumstance is the difficulty of communication, which made letters rare and induced greater care in their composition. Both these circumstances are well illustrated by the early correspondence of Jerome with Augustin. Augustin wrote from Hippo in Africa a long and important letter to Jerome (Ep. lvi.) in the year 394, which did not reach Jerome at Bethlehem for nearly ten years. It was committed to a presbyter named Profuturus to carry to Jerome; but he, being elected to a bishopric before he started, turned back, and soon afterwards died. The letter was neither forwarded to Jerome nor returned to Augustin; but it was copied by others and became known in the West, while its somewhat severe criticisms were unknown to Jerome himself. After a time Augustin became aware by a short letter of introduction written by Jerome to a friend that his first letter had miscarried, and he wrote a second (Ep. lxvii.) much in the same strain; but Paulus, to whom it was entrusted, alleging his fear of the sea, failed to go to Bethlehem; and a copy of the letter was found a year or two afterwards by a friend of Jerome's bound up with some of Augustin's treatises in an island of the Adriatic. Jerome on hearing of this was naturally incensed; and it was not till the year 404 that he received an authentic copy of both letters direct from Augustin, and was able to return an answer. His answer, however, and a knowledge of his views are fuller than they might have been had personal communication been easier.
Knowledge. His knowledge was vast and many-sided [See especially the enumeration of Christian writers who used Pagan literature (149-151), the curious stories about marriage gathered from all ages (383-386), the descriptions of various kinds of food and medicines (392-394) and the account of Pythagoras and his doctrines (Apol. iii., 39, 40, in this Series, Vol. iii. 538)], but it was rather the curiosity of the monks of a later day than the temper of the philosopher or the historian. He was well acquainted with the history and literature of Rome and of Greece; he translated the Chronicle of Eusebius; he speaks of the various routes to India (245), of the Brahmans (97, 193, 397), of the custom of Suttee (381), and of Buddha (380). But he is quite uncritical; he makes no correction of the faults of the Chronicle, and his own additions to it reveal his credulity. He was deeply affected by the sack of Rome, and recurs to it again and again; but his reflections upon this and similar events hardly go beyond those of a mediæval chronicler. He is a recluse, and has no thought of the general interests of mankind.
Church History. This lack of criticism and of general interests combined with lack of time to prevent his making any considerable contribution to church history. That he had some faculties for this is shown by several passages in his Dialogue with a Luciferian (328-331) and his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers (On Illustrious Men, Vol. iii. 361-384). But his conception of church history is shown by his declaration (315) that he intended the Lives of Malchus and Hilarion as part of a series, which when completed would have formed an ecclesiastical history. Such a history would have been nothing more than a prolix edition of Rufinus' History of the Monks. Jerome's value to the church historian is quite of another kind; it lies in the illustration of contemporary life furnished by his own life and letters and by the controversies in which he was engaged.
Theology. These controversies bring us to consider Jerome's position as a theologian. Here he is admittedly weak. He had no real interest in the subject. The first of his letters which deals with theology, that written from the Desert to Pope Damasus, points out clearly the difficulty raised by the difference of phraseology of East and West, the Eastern speaking of one Essence and three Substances, the Western, of one Substance and three Persons. But he makes no attempt to grasp the reality lying behind these expressions, and merely asks not to have the Eastern terms forced on his acceptance, while he professes in the most absolute terms his submission to the decision of the Bishop of Rome. This lack of genuine theological interest best explains his conduct in relation to Origen, his extravagant laudation of him at one time (46), his violent condemnation at another (187). He was carried away by Origen's genius and industry in the department of biblical criticism and exegesis in which he was himself absorbed, and though in his earlier discussion of the Vision of Isaiah (22), which touched the doctrine of the Trinity, he had put aside Origen's view that the Seraphim were the Son and the Spirit as wrongly expressing their relation to the Father, the doctrinal question was feebly present to his thoughts, and he repeated Origen's exposition without blame as to the pre-existence of souls and the restoration of Satan (Ruf. Apol. ii. 13, Vol. iii. 467). When the subject of Origen's orthodoxy was raised at a later time, he was unaware of any inconsistency when he fell in with the general condemnation of his doctrine. So with regard to Eusebius of Cæsarea. In the Preface to the translation of his Book on the Site and Names of Hebrew Places (485), he is "vir admirabilis"; in his controversy with Rufinus, Eusebius is nothing but a heretic. In his controversy with Augustin as to the quarrel between St. Peter and St. Paul in Gal. ii., which he interpreted as fictitious and pre-arranged with a view to bring out St. Paul's solution of the question about the Gentile converts, he was manifestly in the wrong, and eventually seems to have felt this, yet as one who was silenced rather than convinced. At a later period he says to Augustin (Ep. cxxxiv.), "If the heretics see that we hold divergent opinions they will say calumniously that this is a result of hatred, whereas it is my firm resolution to love you, to look up to you, to defer to you with admiration, and to defend your opinions as my own." His dread of heresy may be gathered from passage in the Anti-Pelagian Dialogue (i. 28) in which he expressly declares that, while sin can be forgiven, heresy, as being impiety, is subject to the threat: "They that forsake the Lord shall be consumed." It is true that in his Catalogue he shows wider sympathies, and defends himself in writing to Augustin for the admission into it of men like Philo Judæus and Seneca. But this, though it might have led him to the larger views of the heathen world held by Origen and Clement, did not prevent his condemning to eternal torments even the most virtuous of the heathen. He tells Marcella, a Roman lady (41-42), that one object he has in writing to her is to instruct her that the consul-elect Vettius Agorius Prætextatus, who was known as a model of public and domestic virtue, and who had then recently died, is in Tartarus, while their friend Lea, who had died the same day, is in heaven.
The lack of deep theological conviction is shown in his Dialogue against the Pelagians, where it is evident that he is far from that original and deep view of human corruption which Augustin maintained; indeed, he appears at times to be arguing against his own side, when he says (471) that, "Till the end we are subject to sin; not," (as the opponent falsely imputes to him) "through the fault of our nature and constitution, but through frailty and the mutability of the human will, which varies from moment to moment"--a sentence which might be taken as expressing the doctrine of Pelagius himself. It is evident that in these cases he is swayed not so much by the force of truth as by the authority of certain powerful Bishops and the wish to maintain his orthodox reputation. In his other controversies, with Helvidius, Jovinian, John, Bishop of Jerusalem, Vigilantius, and Rufinus, his method is take for granted the opinion current among the Christians of his day, and to support it by copious (sometimes excessive) quotations from Scripture, and by arguments sometimes well chosen and acutely maintained, as in the book against Helvidius (339), sometimes of the most frivolous character, as in that against Vigilantius (422). In the three last of these controversies the opposition is embittered by personal feeling, and Jerome hardly places any restraint on the contempt and hatred which it engenders.
In his criticisms on Scripture, however, he has a freer judgment, as when he says (337): Whether you think that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, or that Ezra re-edited it, in either case I make no objection;" or (349) that it was the Book of Deuteronomy which was found in the Temple in the reign of Josiah; or contrasts "the flickering flame of the Apostles" with the brightness of the lamp of Christ" (468). There are three points especially on which Jerome reached an independent conviction, and maintained it courageously. (1) He made a clear distinction between the Old Testament Canon and the Apocrypha (194, 491, 492, 493) and this although he records the fact that the Nicene Council had placed the Book of Judith in the Canon (494). For this he is justly commemorated in the Articles of the Church of England (Art. 6). (2) He maintains the essential identity of Bishops and Presbyters (288) and the development of the Episcopal out of the Presbyteral office (288, 289), in the face of the rapid tendency to the extreme exaltation of the Episcopate (92). (3) In the great work of his life, the composition of the Vulgate, he showed a clear and matured conviction, and a noble tenacity, unshaken either by popular clamour (490) or authority like that Augustin (189).
A few words may here be said on the asceticism which Jerome so eagerly promoted. If we ask how it was that he embraced it so fervently as to read it into almost every line of the Scriptures, we can only answer that it was part of the spirit of the time. Jerome had not the elevation of mind which might have enabled him to exercise a judgment upon the current which was bearing him away, or the higher critical power which would distinguish between what was in the Scriptures and what he brought to them. His habit of mind was to accept his general principles from some kind of church authority, which was partly that of the Bishops, partly the general drift of the sentiment of the Christians of his day; and having accepted them, to advocate them vehemently and without discrimination. Jerome could indeed exercise a certain moderation, even in matters of asceticism (246, 267). But his general attitude is that which disdained the common joys of life, which thought of eating, drinking, clothing or lodging, and most of all marriage, as physical indulgences which should suppressed as far as possible, rather than as the means of a noble social intercourse; and dread of impurity haunts him to such an extent as to entirely vitiate his view of society, and to cause him to disparage, and all but forbid, the married relation (29, 384, etc.). His view of monasticism in its inner principles is seen in his treatises against Helvidius, Jovinian, and Vigilantius. The reader may be specially referred to a passage in the last-named treatise, p. 423. If we ask the further question, how the tendency arose which so completely swayed him, we can only attribute it to the state of Roman society in the fourth and fifth centuries, which laid earnest men open to influences already working in other parts of the world. Jerome knew of the Brahmans and the Gymnosophists of India (97, 193, 397), and he several times mentions Buddha (380) as an example of asceticism. But students of Buddhism have failed to trace any direct filiation between the asceticism of the East and the West. [1] The existence of Essenes in Palestine and the Therapeutæ in Egypt, and the unquestionable fact that Christian asceticism originated in Egypt, make some connection with the East probable; and the system of Manes, though at once repudiated, may have exerted some subtle influence. Certain states of the human mind seem all-pervasive, like the causes of diseases which spring up at once in many different places; and principles like those of asceticism maybe communicated through chance conversations or commercial intercourse when the soil is prepared for their reception.