l>72 THIRD PERIOD A.D. 311-590.
jiis correspondence witli Augustine, with all as£.irances of respect, he everywhere g-ives that father to feel his own supe rioritv as a coinprehensivo scholar, and in one place tells hiir. tluit he never hud taken the trouble to read liis writings, exce])ting his Soliloquies and "some commentaries on tlio Psalms." lie indulged in rhetorical exaggerations and unju.st inferences, which violated the laws of truth and honest}' ; and he supported himself in this, with a characteristic reference to the sophist Gorgias, hy the equivocal distinction between the gymnastic or polemic stjde and the didactic' From his master Cicero he had also learned the vicious rhetorical arts of bombast, declamatory fiction, and applause-seeking effects, which are unworthy of a Christian theologian, and which invite the reproach of the divine judge in that vision : "Thou liest! thou art a Ciceronian, not a Christian; for where thy treasure is, there thy heart is also."
§ 17Y. The Works of Jerome.
The writings of Jerome, which fill eleven folios in the edition of Vallarsi, may be divided into exegetical, historical, polemic doctrinal, and polemic ethical works, and epistles."
I. The EXEGETICAL works stand at the head.
Amonsc these the Vul^-ata,^ or Latin version of the whole
' Between yvfxvaariKoi^ scribere and ^(i-y^anKW'; scribere. Ep. 48 ad Paramachium pro libris contra Jovinianum, cap. 13.
' The Vallarsi edition, Verona, 1734-'42, and with improvements, Venet. 17l')6- '72, is much more complete and accurate than the Benedictine or Maurine edition of Martlanai/ and Pou(jet, in 5 vols. 1706, althourrh this far surpassed the older editions of Erannius, and Marianua Victorius. The edition of M/c/ue, Paris (Peiitilontrouge), 1845-46, also in 11 volumes (torn, xxii.-xxx. of the Patrologia Lat.), notvvithst^mding the boastful title, is only an uncritical reprint of the edition of Vallarsi with unessential changes in the order of arrangement ; the Vitoe Hieronymi and the Testimoni^ de Hieronymo being transferred from the eleventh to the first volume, which is more convenient. Vallarsi, a presbyter of Verona, was assisted in bis work by Scipio Maffei, and others. I have mostly used his edition, especially in the Epistles.
^ The name Vulgata, sc. editio, Kutvh «»<r5o(ri s, i. e., the received text of thf Bible, was a customary designation of the Septuagint, as also of the Latin It.ila (frequently so used in Jerome and Augustine), sometimes used iu the bad sense of
§ 177. THE WORKS OF JEROME. 97?
Bible, Old Testament and New, is by far the most importaat and valuable, and constitutes alone an immortal service."
a vulgar, corrupt text as distinct from the oiiginal. The council of Trent sanctioned the use of the term in the honorable sense for Jerome's version of the Bible. With the same right Luther's version might be called the German, King James' version the English Vulgate.
' This is now pretty generally acknowledged. We add a few of the most weighty testimonies. Luther, who bore a real aversion to Jerome on account of his fanatical devotion to monkery, still, in view of the invaluable assistance he received from the Vulgate in his own similar work, does him the justice to say : " St. Jerome has personally done more and greater in translation than any one man will imitate." ZiicKLER, 1. c. p. 183, thinks: "The Vulgate is unquestionably the most important and most meritorious achievement of our author, the ripest fruit of his laborious studies, not only in the department of Hebrew, in which he leaves alj other ecclesiastical authors of antiquity far beliiud, but also in that of Greek and of biblical criticism and exegesis in general, in which he excels at least all, even the gi'eatest, of the Western fathers." 0. F. Fritzsche (in Herzog's Encykl. vol. xvii. p. 435) : " The severe judgment respecting the labor of Jerome softened with time, and, in fact, so swung to the opposite, that he was regarded as preserved from error by the guidance of the Holy Ghost. This certainly cannot be admitted, for the defects are palpably many and various. Yet criticism must acknowledge that Jerome performed a truly important service for his age ; that he first gave the Old Testament to the West, and in a measure also the New, in a substantially pure form ; put a stop, provisionally, to the confusion of the Bible text ; and as a translator gave, on the whole, the true sense. He very properly aimed to be interpres, not parapkrastes, but in the great dissimilarity between the Hebrew and Latin idiom, he encountered the danger of slavish literalness. This he has in general avoided, and has been able to keep a certain mean between too great strictness and too great freedom, so that the language, though everywhere showing the Hebrew tinge, would not at all offend, but rather favor, the reader of that day. Yet it may be said that Jerome could have done still better. It was not that reverence, caution, restrained him ; to avoid offence, he adhered as closely as possible to the current version, especially in the New Testament. He sometimes let false translations stand, when they seemed harmless ("quod non nocebat, mutare uoluimus"), and probably followed popular usage in respect to phraseology ; so that the style is not perfectly uniform. Finally, he did not always give himself due time, but worked rapidly. This is particularly true in the Apocrypha, of which, however, he had a very low estimate. Some parts he left entirely untouched, others he translated or revised vory hastily." Comp. also the opinion of the English scholar, B. F. Westcott, in W. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. iii. pp. 1696 and 1'714 f., who says among other things : " When every allowance has been made for the rudeness of the original Latin, and the haste of Jerome's revision, it can scarcely be denied that the Vulgate is not only the most venerable but also the most precious monument of Latin Christianity. For ten centuries it preserved in Western Europe a text of Holy Scripture far purer than that which was current in the Byzantine church ; and at the revival of Greek learning, guided the way towards a revision of the late