§ 17Y. THE WORKS OF JEROME. 983
Lea, Blasilla, Paulina, Paula, and Marcella, are masterpiece! of rhetorical ascetic hagiographj. They introduce the legend ary literature of the middle age, with its indiscriminate miX' ture of history and fable, and its sacrifice of historical truth to popular edilication.
III. Of the POLEMIC DOCTRINAL and ETHICAL works ' some relate to the Arian controversies, some to the Origenistic, some to the Pelagian. In the first class belongs the Dialogue against the scliismatic Luciferians,"^ which Jerome wrote during his desert life in Syria (a. d. 379) on the occasion of the Meletian schism in Antioch ; also his translation of the work of Didymus On the Holy Ghost, begun in Pome and finished in Bethlehem. His book Against Bishop John of Jerusalem (a. d. 399), and his Apology to his former friend Pufinus, in three books (a. d. 402-403), are directed against Origenism.' In the tliird class belongs the Dialogue against the Pelagians, in three books (a. d. 415). Other polemic works, Against Helvidius (written in 383), Against Jovinian (a. d. 393), and Against Yigilantius (dictated rapidly in one night in 406), are partly doctrinal, partly ethical in their nature, and mainly devoted to the advocaf-y of the immaculate virginity of Mary, celibacy, vigils, relic-worship, and the monastic life.
These controversial writings, the contents of which we have already noted in the proper place, do the author, on the whole, little credit, and stand in striking contrast with his fame as
" All in the second volume of the editions of Vallarsi (p. 171 sqq.) and Migne (p. 155 sqq.).
^ iltercatio Luciferiani et Orthodoxi, or Dialogus contra Luciferianos. The Luctferians had their name from Lucifer, bishop of Calaris in Sardinia (died 371), the head of the strict Athanasran party, who arbitrarily ordained Paulinus bisliop of Antioch in opposition to the legitimate Meletius (362), because the latter had been elected by the Arian or Semi-Arian party, although immediately after his ordination he had given in his adhesion to the Nicene faith. Lucifer afterwards fell out with the orthodox and organized a new schismatic party, which adopted Novatian principles of discipline, but in the beginning of the fifth century gradually letumed to the bosom of the Catholic church.
' Besides these Jerome translated several letters of Epiphanius and Theophihil of Alexandria against the Origenists, which have been incorporated by Vallarsi with tlie collection of Jerome's Epistles.
984 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
oue of tlie principal saints of the Uoman cliurcli. Tliey sho\t an accurate acquaintance with all the arts of an advocate and all the pugilism of a dialectician, together with houndlesg vehemence and I'anatical zealotism, which scruple over nc weapons of wit, mockery, irony, suspicion, and calumny, to annihilate opponents, and which pursue them even after their deatli.' And their contents afford no sufificient compensatior for these faults. For Jerome was not an original, profound, systematic, or consistent thinker, and tlierefore very little litted for a didactic theologian. In the Arian controversy he would not enter into any discussion of the distinction hetween ovaia and vTTocrraai^;, and left this important question to the decision of the Roman bishop Damasus ; in the Origenistic controversy he must, in his violent condemnation of all Origenists, contradict his own former view and veneration of Orio-eu as the greatest teacher after the Apostles ; and in the Pelagian co)i troversy he was influenced chiefly by personal considerations, and drawn half way to Augustine's side; for while he Nvas always convinced of the universality of sin,'' in reference to the freedom of the will and predestination he adopted synergistic or Semi-Pelagian views, and afterwards continued in the
' Of the dead Jovinian be says (Adv. Vigil, c. 1): "Die Romanic ccclesiae auctorilate damnatus, inter phasides aves et carnus suillaa nou tarn eniisit spiritum, quam eructavit." He threatened his former friend Kufiuus, whose language he had perverted into a threat to take his life, with a libel suit, and after bis death in 410 he wrote in an ignoble sense of triumph (in the Prologue to his Commentary on Ezekiel): '■'■ Scorpius inter Enceladum et Porphyrionem Trinacriie bumo premitur, et hydra multorum capitum contra nos aliquando sibilare cessavit." From Jerome's polemical writings one would form a most unfavorable opinion of llufinus. Two divines of Aquileja, Fontaniui and Maria de Kubeis, felt it their duty to vindicate his memory against unjust aspersions. Comp. Zocklkr, 1. c. p. 206 f. Augustine, in a letter to Jerome (Kp. Hieron. 110, c, 10), called it a "magnum et triste niiraculum," that the friendship of Jerome and Uutinus should have turned into such enmity, and urged him to reconciliation, but in vain. This change, however, ia easily explained, since hatred is only inverted love. Eutinus, it must be remembered, had not spared Jerome, and charged him even with worse than heathen impiety for calling, in hyper-ascetic zeal, Paula, the mother of the nun Eustochium, the ''mother-in-law of God" (socrus Dei). See his Ep. xxii. c. 20 ad Pauiam.
' Comp. particularly the passage, Dial. adv. Pelag. 1. ii. c. 4 (toni. ii. p t44V