§ 41, ST. JEROME AS A MONK. 213
literary controversies, not only witli opponents of tlie cliurcli oitliodoxy like Helvidiiis (against whom lie had appeared before, in 384:), Jovinian, Yigilantius, and Pelagius, but also with his long-tried friend Rutinus, and even with Augustine.' Palladius says, his jealousy could tolerate no sair.t beside him Belf, and drove many pious monks away from Bethlehem. He complained of the crowds of monks whom his fame attracted to Bethlehem.'' The remains of the Homan nobility, too, ruined by the sack of Rome, fled to him for food and shelter. At tho last his repose was disturbed by incursions of the barbarian Huns and the heretical Pelagians. He died in 419 or 420, of fever, at a great age. His remains were afterward brought to the Roman basilica of Maria Maggiore, but were exhibited also and superstitiously venerated in several copies in Florence, Prague, Chigny, Paris, and the Escurial.'
The Roman church has long since assigned him one of the first places among her standard teachers and canonical saints. Yet even some impartial Catholic historians venture to admit and disapprove his glaring inconsistencies and violent passions. The Protestant love of truth iuclines to the judgment, that Jerome w^as indeed an accomplished and most serviceable scholar and a zealous enthusiast for all which his age counted holy, but lacking in calm self-control and proper depth of mind and character, and that he reflected, with the virtues,
' His controversy with Augustine on the interpretation of Gal. ii. 14 is not unimportant as an index of the moral character of the two most illustrous Latin fathers of the church. Jerome saw iu the account of the collision between Paul and Peter, in Antioch, an artifice of pastoral prudence, and supposed that Paul did not there reprove the senior apostle in earnest, but only for effect, to reclaim the Jews from their wrong notions respecting the validity of the ceremonial law. Augustine's delicate sense of truth was justly offended by this exegesis, which, to save the dignity of Peter, ascribed falsehood to Paul, and he expressed his opinion to Jerome, who, however, very loftily made him feel his smaller grammatical knowledge. But they afterward became reconciled. Comp. on this dispute the letters on both sides, in Hieron. Opera, ed. Vail. torn. i. 632 sqq., and the treatise of Mohler, in his " Vermischte Schriften," vol. i. p. 1-18.
' " Tantis de toto orbe confluentibus obruimur turbis monachorum." * The Jesuit Stilting, the author of the Vita Hieron. in the Acta Sanctorum, devotes nearly thirty folio pages to accounts of the veneration paid to liim and hi* relics after his death.
214 THLKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
thi3 failings also of his age and of the monastic system. It must be said to his credit, however, that with all his enthusiastic zeal and admiration for monasticism, he saw witli a keen eye and exposed with unsparing hand the false monks and nuns, and painted in lively colors the dangers of melancholy, hypochondria, the hypocrisy and spiritual pride, to which the iubtitution was exposed.'
§ 42. St. Paula.
HiERONYMUS : Epitaphium Paulas matris, ad Eustochium virginem, Ep. cviii. (ed, Vallarsi, Opera, torn. i. p. 68i sqq. ; ed. Bened. Ep. Isxxvi). Also the Acta Sanctokum, and Butler's Lives of Saints, sub Jan. 26.
Of Jerome's many female disciples, the most distinguished IS St. Paula, the model of a Roman Catholic nun. With his
* Most Roman Catholic biographers, a3 Maitianay, Vallarsi, Stilting, Dolci, and even the Anglican Cave, are unqualified eulogists of Jerome. See also the " Selects Veterum testimonia de Hieronymo ejusque scriptis," in Vallarsi's edition, torn. xi. pp. 282-300. Tillemont, however, who on account of his Jansenist proclivity sympathizes more with Augustine, makes a move toward a more enlightened judgment, for which Stilting sharply reproves him. Montalembert (1. c. i. 402) praises him aa a man of genius, inspired by zeal and subdued by penitence, of ardent faith and immense resources of knowledge ; yet he incidentally speaks also of his " almost savage impetuosity of temper," and " that inexhaustible vehemence which sometimes degenerated into emphasis and affectation." Dr. John H. Newman, in his opinion before his transition from Puseyism to Komanism, exhibits the conflict in which the moral feeling is here involved with the authority of the Roman Church : " I do not scruple to say, that, were he not a saint, there are things in his writings and views from which I should shrink ; but as the case stands, I shrink rather from putting myself in opposition to something like a judgment of the catholic (?) world in favor of his saintly perfection." (Church of the Fathei-s, 263, cited by Robertson.) Luther also here boldly broke through tradition, but, forgetful of the great value of the Vulgate even to liis German version of the Bible, went to the opposite extreme of unjust derogation, expressing several times a distinct antipathy to this church fallier, and charging him with knowing not how to write at all of Christ, but only of fasts, virginity, and useless monkish exercises. Le Clerc exposed his defects with thorough ability, but unfairly, in his " Qua'Stiones Ilieronymianas " (Amstel. 1700, over 500 pages). Mosheim and Schriickh are more mild, but the latter considers it doubtful whether Jerome did Christianity more good than harm. Among later Protestant historians opinion has become som-'what more favorable, though rather to his learning than to his moral character, which betrays in his letters and controversial writiu'/f toe many unquestionable weaknesses.