But it seems better to look to the social and political state of the world as the predisposing cause of monasticism. Even in the East it is thought that the miserable conditions of practical life have been the main cause of a religion of despair; and the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries offered similar causes in abundance. The grace which is completely absent from the great Christian writers of that epoch is hope. Such hope as is found even in the Civitas Dei of Augustin is entirely that of the world to come. The world before them seemed hopelessly corrupt. The descriptions of private morals given by Jerome are borne out by Ammianus Marcellinus; the failure of public spirit and military valour was equally conspicuous; and Gratian and Stilicho appear on the scene only to be murdered. When the crash of Alaric's sack of Rome shook the existing world, no one realised that a new Christian world was coming, and the flight which Jerome witnessed of thousands of citizens from the sinking city to the mountains of Palestine was but one symptom of the despair which made them, to use Jerome's words, "quit the most frequented cities that in the fields and solitude they might mourn for sin and draw down on themselves the compassion of Christ" (446).
As an illustrator of Scripture, Jerome did much, and in some respects excellent work. The Book of Hebrew Names was no doubt of much use in the ages in which men were ignorant of Hebrew, although it has the clumsy arrangement of a separate glossary for each book of the Bible; it is very faulty and uncritical; there is no explanation, for instance, of Lehi in Judges, or of Engedi or Ichabod in 1 Samuel, or of Bethabara or Bethany in John, and the meanings given to words are extremely uncritical and sometimes absurd. Cherubim is said to mean a multitude of knowledge; Jezebel, "flowing with blood, a litter, a dung heap"; and Laodicæa, "the tribe beloved of the Lord, or, they have been in vomiting." It is worthless now except as showing the state of knowledge of the fourth century A.D., and that of the author of the Vulgate.
The Book of the Site and Names of Hebrew Places belongs rather to Eusebius than to Jerome, being translated from Eusebius, though with some additions. An account of it is given in the Prolegomena to Eusebius. The arrangement of this book is, like the former, very inconvenient, the names under each letter being placed in separate groups in the order of the books of Scripture in which they occur: for instance, under the letter A we have first the names in Genesis, then those in Exodus, and so on. But there is less room here for what is fanciful, and the testimony of men who lived in Palestine in the fourth and fifth centuries is of great value still to the student of sacred topography. When the places are outside the writer's knowledge, credulity is apt to creep in, as when the author tells us that in Ararat portions of the ark are still to be found.
The Book of Hebrew Questions on Genesis is simply a set of notes on passages where the reference to the Hebrew text gives a different reading from that of the LXX., which was received as authoritative up to Jerome's day. For instance, in Gen. xlvi. 26, the LXX. says that Joseph's descendants born in Egypt were nine, the Hebrew, two. Jerome accounts for the discrepancy by the supposition that the LXX. added in the sons of Ephraim and Manasseh, who were subsequently born in Egypt, and who in the LXX. are enumerated just before. Jerome states in the preface his intention to compose a similar set of notes to each book of the Old Testament, but he was never able to go beyond Genesis. What he gives us is of considerable interest and value, so that it is a matter of regret that he could not go further.
As a commentator, Jerome's fault is a lack of independence; his merit lies in giving fully the opinions of others which we might otherwise not have known. This he considers, as seen in his controversy with Rufinus, the principal task of a commentator (Apol. i. 16, Vol. iii. 491). In the passages there at issue, he states the most incongruous interpretations without criticising them, and Rufinus can hardly be blamed for suggesting that he is sometimes expressing his own opinion under that of "another." In matters of ordinary interpretation his judgment is good. But fanciful ideas are apt to intrude, as when, in the Commentary on Ecclesiastes, the city delivered by the poor wise man is made to mean the individual delivered from Satan by the better man within him, or the Church delivered from the hosts of darkness by Christ. When an occasion for the introduction of asceticism occurs, Jerome never hesitates at any process, however absurd, which will draw the passage to a sanction of his peculiar views (Against Jovin. i. 30, p. 368). We should have been glad, had space permitted, to have given a specimen of his better style of exposition, but it was found necessary to suppress this.
It is as a translator of Scripture that Jerome is best known. His Vulgate was made at the right moment and by the right man. The Latin language was still living, although Latin civilisation was dying; and Jerome was a master of it. It is only to be regretted that he did not give fuller scope to his literary power in his translation of Scripture. In his letter to Pammachius on the best method of translation (114), he advocates great freedom of treatment, even such as amounts to paraphrase, and even to the insertion of sentences congruous to the sense of the author. He takes the fact that the quotations in the New Testament from the Old often present discrepancies in words and sense as justifying similar discrepancies in a translation. He does not, however, appear in dealing with ordinary books to have used this license in any extreme way; and his translations, without departing from correctness, read as good literary composition. But from the operation of his rules of translation he expressly excepts the Scriptures. "In other books," he says (113), "my effort is not to express word by word, but meaning by meaning; but in the Holy Scriptures even the order of the words has a secret meaning" (et ordo verborum mysterium est). He even says (80): "A version made for the use of the Church, even though it may possess a literary charm, ought to disguise and avoid it as far as possible." This belief in a secret meaning in the words and their order as apart from the sense goes far to injure the Vulgate translation. His principles, indeed, are excellent, namely, (1) never to swerve needlessly from the original; (2) to avoid solecisms; (3) even by the admission of solecisms, to give the true sense. But it is evident that they must be vitiated by the supposition of a hidden sense in the arrangement of the words; and the result is a style which frequently deprives a passage of its proper elegance, and the pleasure which it should give to the reader, and a too frequent introduction of solecisms and abandonment of the attempt to make sense of a passage. It also gives an air of saintly unreality to many parts of the Scriptures and thus to produce confusion. The merits of the translation are also very various, as was the time which Jerome bestowed on the different parts. The Books of Solomon, for instance, he translated very rapidly (492), the Book of Tobit in a single day (494). For some parts he trusted to his own knowledge, for others he obtained aid at great cost of money and trouble (Preface to Job and to Tobit, 491, 494). But, while we thus go behind the scenes, we must not fail to look at the completed work as a whole. It was wrought out with noble perseverance and unflinching purpose amidst many discouragements. It was highly prized even in Jerome's lifetime, so that he is able to record that a large part of the Old Testament was translated into Greek from his version by his friend Sophronius, and was read in the Eastern Churches (492). After his death it won its way to become the Vulgate or common version of Western Christendom; it was the Bible of the Middle Ages; and in the year 1546 (eleven centuries after its author's death) was pronounced by the Council of Trent to be the only true version, and alone authorised to be printed.
A few personal details must be given to illustrate his method of composition and his surroundings. Nothing is known of his personal appearance. His health was weak, and he had several long illnesses, especially in the years 398, 404, and in the last year of his life. His eyes began to fail during his stay at Constantinople in 380-382, and he usually employed an amanuensis; but he still wrote at times, and what he wrote was more polished than what he dictated. "In the one case I constantly turn the stylus; in the other, whatever words come into my mouth I heap together in my rapid utterance" (Ep. lxxiv. 6). He composed with great rapidity, and dictated at times as much as one thousand lines in a day (Comm. on Ephes., Book ii. Preface). He often, especially when in weak health, lay on a couch (Ep. lxxiv. 6), taking down one volume after another to aid in the composition of his Commentaries. And he often sat late into the night [his book against Vigilantius was "the lucubration of a single night" (423)], the days being occupied in business of various kinds, as stated above--the monasteries, the entertainment of strangers, the teaching of boys, the exposition of Scripture to his brethren in the monastery, and, according to Sulpicius Severus, the charge of the parish of Bethlehem. As has been mentioned above, he was interrupted again and again by illness, and on several occasions was in alarm from the threatened invasions of the Huns and Isaurians, and at the end of his life from the violent adherents of Pelagius. He also suffered from poverty, and his friends one by one were taken from him. But he persevered against all obstacles; and his latest works, the Anti-Pelagian Dialogue and the Commentary on Jeremiah, show little if any diminution of power.
[1] See a remarkable article on "The New Testament and Buddhism," by Professor Estlin Carpenter, in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1879.
VI.--Character and Influence of Jerome.
This Introduction must be concluded with a few words on the character and influence of Jerome, which are taken from the article upon him in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. He was vain and unable to bear rivals, extremely sensitive as to the estimation in which he was held by his contemporaries, and especially by the Bishops; passionate and resentful, but at times becoming suddenly placable; scornful and violent in controversy; kind to the weak and the poor; respectful in his dealings with women; entirely without avarice; extraordinarily diligent in work, and nobly tenacious of the main objects to which he devoted his life. There was, however, something of monkish cowardice in his asceticism, and his influence was not felt by the strong.
His influence grew through his life and increased after his death. If we may use a scriptural phrase which has sometimes been applied to such influence, "He lived and reigned for a thousand years." His writings contain the whole spirit of the Church of the Middle Ages, its monasticism, its contrast of sacred things with profane, its credulity and superstition, its value for relics, its subjection to hierarchical authority, its dread of heresy, its passion for pilgrimages. To the society which was thus in a great measure formed by him, his Bible was the greatest boon which could have been given. But he founded no school and had no inspiring power; there was no courage or width of view in his spiritual legacy such as could break through the fatal circle of bondage to received authority which was closing round mankind. As Thierry says in the last words of his work on St. Jerome, "There is no continuation of his work; a few more letters of Augustin and Paulinus, and night falls over the West."
Chronological Tables of the Life and Times of St. Jerome A.D. 345-420.
Personal.
Literary.
Contemporary History.
Contemporary History (Ecclesiastical).
345. Jerome born at Stridon (Pannonia or Dalmatia).
340. Death of Constantine.
341. Athanasius at Rome.
360. Jerome at school.
352. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem.
363. To study at Rome. Baptism.
353. Constantius sole Emperor.
366. To Treves.
356. Eusebius of Vercellæ, and other orthodox Bishops banished by Constantius.
366-69. Jerome copies works of Hilary.
356. Death of Antony.
369. Jerome writes a mystical Commentary on Obadiah.
359. Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia.
370. To Aquileia.
370. First letter--On the woman seven times struck with the axe.