968 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
could not live witlioiit books, lie aceordiMglj collected, b^ great sacrifices, a library for that time very coiifciderable and costly, which accompanied him on his journeys.' He t'urtliei availed himself of the oral instruction of great church teachers, like ApoUinaris the Elder in Laodicea, Gregory Nazianzen in Constantinople, and Didymus of Alexandria, and was not ashamed to become an inquiring pu})il in his mature age. Ilia principle in studying was, in his own words: "To read the ancients, to test everything, to hold fast the good, and never to depart from the catholic faith." "
Besides the passion for knowledge, which is the mother of learning, he possessed a remarkable memory, a keen understanding, quick and sound judgment, an ardent temperament, a lively imagination, sparkling wit, and brilliant power of expression. He was a master in all the arts and artifices of rhetoric and dialectics. He, far more than Lactantius, deserves the name of the Christian Cicero, though he is inferior to Lactantius in classic purity, and was not free from tlie faulty taste of his time. Tertullian had, indeed, long before applied the Roman language as the organ of Christian theology ; Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary, and Ambrose, had gone further on the same path ; and Augustine has enriched the Christian literature with a greater number of pregnant sentences than all the other fathers together. Nevertheless Jerome is the chief former of the Latin church language, for which his Vulgate did a decisive and standard service similar to that of Luther's translation of the Bible for German literature, and that of the authorized English Protestant version for English.''
' He confesses that the purchase of the numerous works of Origen had exhausted his purse, Ep. 84, c. 3 (toro. i. 525): "Legi, inquam, Icgi Origenem, et, si in Icgcndo crimen est, fateor ; et nostrum marsupium Alexandrinas chartae evacuarunt." When he saw, and was permitted to use, the library of Pamphilus iij Caesarea, with all the works of Origen, he thought he possessed more than the riches of Crcesus (De viri? jUustr. c. 15).
'^ " Ileum propositum est, antiques legeic, probttre singula, retinere qua? bona 8unt, et a fide catholica numquam recederc."
" OzANAM (Ilistoire de la civilisation clu-ct. au 5. sii'cle, ii. KX)) calls JerDrac: " Le mnitre de la prose chrotienne pour tons lea sieclcs suivants." Zi'ickler says (L c. p. 323): " As Cicero raised the language of his time to the classic grade, and cast it for all time? in a model form, so, of the Western church fathers, Jerome vroA
§ 176. JEKOME AS A DIVINE AND SCHOLAE. 90€
His scholarship embraced the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages and literature ; while even Augustine had but imperfect knowdedge of the Greek, and none at all of the He brew. Jerome was familiar with the Latin classics, especially with Cicero, Virgil, and Horace ; ' and even after his famous auti-Ciceronian vision (which transformed him from a more or less secular scholar into a Christian ascetic and hermit) he could not entirely cease to read over the favorite authors of his youth, or at least to quote them from his faithful memory ; thus subjecting himself to the charge of inconsistency, and even of perjury, from E.ufinus.'' Equally accurate was his knowledge of the literature of the church. Of the Latin fathers he particularly admired Tertullian for his powerful genius and vigorous style, though he could not forgive him his Montanism ; after him Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary, and Ambrose. Li the Gi'eek classics he was less at home; yet ho shows acquaintance with Llesiud, Sophocles, Herodotus, Demosthenes, Aristotle, Theo[ihrastus, and Galen. But in the Greek fathers he was w^ell read, especiall}^ in Origen, Eusebius, Didymus, and Gregory Nazianzen ; less in Irenseus, Athanasius, Basil, and other doctrinal writers.
the one to rrMhe the Latin langiiage Christian^ and Christian theology Laliny Erasmus placed him as an author in several respects even above Cicero.
' Virgil is quoted in the Letters of Jerome some fifty tuues, in his other works much more frequently ; Horace, in the Letters, some twenty times ; of the prose writers Cicero more than all, next to him Varro, Sallust, Quintilian, Seneca, Suetonius, and Pliny. Virgil, however, is viewed by Jerome, and by Augustine, who likewise admired him greatly, simply as a great poet, and not, as he afterwards came to be considered in the Latin church, especially through the influence of Dante's Divina Commedia, as a divine and prophet of heathenism.
^ Gomp. §41 above, and Zockler, 1. c. p. 45 ff., 156, and 325. It is certain that Jerome, after that dream of about 374, almost entirely suspended and evc^n abhorred the study of- the classics for fifteen years (comp. the Preface to his Commentary on the Galatians, written a. 888, Opera, torn. vii. 486, ed. Vallarsi), but that afterwards at Bethlehem he instructed the monks in grammaticis et humanioribus (Rufinus, Apol. ii. 8), and inserted quotations ifoax the classics in his later writings, although mostly as reminiscences of his former reading (" quasi antiqui per nebulam somnii recordamur," as he says in the preface above referred to), and with the obvious intent of making profane literature subservient to the Bible (comp. hi? Epistola xxi. ad Damasum, cap. 13). Both Jerome and Rufinus permitted them selves to be carried by passion to exaggerated assertions at the expense of truth.