A letter from Jerome (402?)

Translated letter:

1. Again I enrich you with eastern rewards and send Alexandrian wealth for the first time to Rome. "God came from the south and the holy one from mount Paran with thick shadow" [Hab.3:3]; so the bride rejoices in the Song of Songs saying: "in his shadow I sat and desired, and his fruit was sweet in my mouth" [Cant.2:3]. Truly now the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled: "on that day there will be an altar to the lord in the center of the land of Egypt" [Isa.19.19], so where sin was abundant now glory should be superabundant. Those who fostered the little Christ defend the adult with the ardor of faith so who through them fled the hands of Herod may put to flight the blaspheming heretic. Whom Demetrius drove out of the city of Alexander, Theophilus makes flee from the whole world, Theophilus, to whom Luke wrote the gospel, who found his name from the love of god. Where is the tortuous snake now? Where the most poisonous viper, "first the face of man connected to the womb of wolves" [Aeneid, 3.426,428]? Where is the heresy which hissed in the world and shook me and bishop Theophilus with the barking of its error and lied about our assent to mislead the simple? It is oppressed by his authority and eloquence and, speaking about earth, does not know him who coming from above speaks about what is above. 2. If only the serpentine generation would either simply acknowledge our [position] or firmly defend its own, so that we might know who are to be loved by us, who to be avoided. Now, however — a new kind of repentance — they hate us as enemies whose faith they dare not publicly deny. What is this sorrow, I ask, which is not healed by time nor reason? Among quivering swords, strewn bodies, flowing rivers of blood, hostile right hands are often joined and sudden peace alters the frenzy of war: only the followers of this heresy can not be allied with ecclesiastics since what they are compelled to say in speech they condemn in their minds. And if, when open blasphemy is revealed to the ears of the public, they see the audience around them trembling against them, then they say with feigned simplicity that they first heard things from teachers they did not know to say [on their own] and when their writings are held up, they deny with the voice what they avow in their letters. What need is there to attack Propontis, to change places, to traverse various regions and to mangle the illustrious pontiff of Christ and his disciples with a rabid mouth? If you speak truly you alter the ardor of error by the ardor of faith. Why then do you sew the clothes of the cursed and seize the lives of those whose faith you can not resist? Are you not therefore heretics if certain people believe by your assertion that we are sinners and will you not have a mouth foul with impiety if you can show the scar in our ear? How does it serve your perfidy, how does the Ethiopian skin and variety of the leopard benefit [you] if a mole appears in our body? Observe that bishop Theophilus argued with total freedom that Origen is a heretic; they do not defend what he said or pretend it was changed by heretics and they call the books of many [others] similarly perverted, so they protect him not by his faith but by the errors of others. Truly these things are said against heretics who raging in their minds speak secrets against us with unjust hatred and witness poisons of the breast with irremediable pain. 3. You, lights of the Christian senate, accept the letter this year in Greek and Latin — so that heretics do not again lie that many things have been added or changed by us — a letter in which I confess I have labored so that I might preserve the elegance of words with equal beauty of interpretation and running within defined lines I would not lose the fluency of his eloquence by any excess — whether I have succeeded I leave to your judgment. You know it is divided into four parts: in the proem he urges believers to celebrate the lord's easter, in the second and third, he convicts Apollinaris and Origen, in the fourth, the last, he exhorts heretics to repentance. If less is said here again Origen, it is contained in the letter of the previous year and what we consider here ought not to be extended for brevity's sake. Moreover, succinct faith and a pure profession do not lack dialectic subtlety against Apollinaris, which confounds the adversary having wrenched the dagger from his hands. 4. Pray the lord, therefore, that what pleases in Greek does not displease in Latin and what all the east admires and preaches Rome will receive with happy breast and the cathedra of the apostle Peter will confirm the preaching of the cathedra of the evangelist Mark, that it be published with the celebrated speech and his letters teach blessed pope Anastasius with that fervor since it is from that spirit, to pursue heretics hiding in its snares, and condemn in the west what is condemned in the east. For which we have prayed many years that the revived plants of heresy, dried up for a long time through his zeal, may die.

Original letter:

1. Rursum orientalibus vos locupleto mercibus et Alexandrinas opes primo Romam vere transmitto. deus ab Austro veniet et sanctus de monte Faran umbra condensa; unde et sponsa laetatur in Cantico canticorum dicens: in umbra eius concupivi et sedi; et fructus eius dulcis in faucibus meis. vere nunc conpletur Esaiae vaticinium praedicantis: in die illa erit altare domini in medio terrae Aegypti, ut, ubi abundavit peccatum, superabundaret gratia. qui parvulum Christum foverant, adultum fidei calore defendunt, ut, qui per illos Herodis effugerat manus, effugiat hereticum blasphemantem. quem Demetrius Alexandri urbe pepulit, toto orbe fugat Theophilus, Theophilus, ad quem Lucas scripsit evangelium, qui ex amore dei nomen invenit. ubi nunc est coluber tortuosus? ubi venenatissima vipera, prima hominis facies utero commissa luporum? ubi heresis, quae sibilabat in mundo et me et papam Theophilum sui iactabat erroris latratuque inpudentissimorum canum ad inducendos simplices nostrum mentiebatur adsensum? oppressa est eius auctoritate et eloquentia et in morem daemonicorum spirituum de terra loquitur. nescit enim eum, qui desursum veniens ea loquitur, quae sursum sunt. 2. Atque utinam serpentina generatio aut simpliciter nostra fateatur aut constanter defendat sua, ut scire valeamus, qui nobis amandi sint, qui cavendi! nunc autem -- novum paenitentiae genus -- oderunt nos quasi hostes, quorum fidem publice negare non audent. rogo, qui est iste dolor, qui nec tempore nec ratione curatur? inter micantes gladios, iacentia corpora, rivos sanguinis profluentes iunguntur saepe hostiles dexterae et belli rabiem pax repentina conmutat: soli sunt huius hereseos sectatores, qui cum ecclesiasticis non valent foederari, quia, quod sermone coguntur dicere, mente condemnant. et si quando aperta blasphemia publicis auribus fuerit revelata et viderint contra se audientiam circum fremere, tunc simplicitate simulata dicunt audisse se primum, quae magistrum dicere haud nescierint. cumque eorum scripta teneantur, voce negant, quod litteris confitentur. quid necesse est obsidere Propontidem, mutare loca, diversas lustrare regiones et clarissimum pontificem Christi eiusque discipulos rabido ore discerpere? si vera loquimini, pristinum erroris ardorem ardore fidei conmutate. quid maledictorum pannos hinc inde consuitis et eorum carpitis vitam, quorum fidei resistere non valetis? num idcirco vos non estis heretici, si nos quidam adsertione vestra crediderint peccatores, et os inpietate fetidum non habebitis, si cicatricem potueritis in nostra aure monstrare? quid iuvat vestram perfidiam vel prodest pellis Aethiopica et pardi varietas, si in nostro corpore naevus apparuerit? en papa Theophilus tota Origenem arguit libertate hereticum esse: nec dicta defendunt aut fingunt ab hereticis inmutata multorumque dicunt libros similiter depravatos, ut illum non sua fide, sed aliorum tueantur erroribus. verum haec adversum hereticos dicta sint, qui iniusto contra nos odio saevientes mente fatentur arcanum et venena pectoris inremediabili dolore testantur. 3. Vos, Christiani senatus lumina, accipite et Graecam et Latinam etiam hoc anno epistulam -- ne rursum heretici mentiantur a nobis pleraque vel addita vel mutata -- in qua laborasse me fateor, ut verborum elegantiam pari interpretationis venustate servarem et intra definitas lineas currens nec in quoquam excedens loco eloquentiae eius fluenta non perderem easdemque res eodem sermone transferrem -- quod utrum necne consecutus sim, vestro iudicio derelinquo --; quam sciatis in quattuor partes esse divisam: et in prooemio credentes hortatur ad dominicum pascha celebrandum, in secundo et tertio loco Apollinarem et Origenem iugulat, in quarto, id est extremo, hereticos ad paenitentiam cohortatur. si quid autem hic minus adversum Origenem dictum est, et in praeteriti anni epistula continetur et haec, quam modo vertimus, brevitati studens dicere plura non debuit. porro contra Apollinarem succincta fides et pura professio non caret subtilitate dialectica, quae adversarium suum extorto de manibus eius pugione confodit. 4. Orate igitur dominum, ut, quod in Graeco placet, in Latino non displiceat et, quod totus oriens miratur et praedicat, laeto sinu Roma suscipiat praedicationemque cathedrae Marci evangelistae cathedra apostoli Petri sua praedicatione confirmet, quamquam celebri sermone vulgatum sit beatum quoque papam Anastasium eodem fervore, quia eodem est spiritu, latitantes in foveis suis hereticos persecutum eiusque litterae doceant damnatum in occidente, quod in oriente damnatum est. cui multos inprecamur annos, ut hereseos rediviva plantaria per illius studium longo tempore arefacta moriantur.

Historical context:

Jerome sent his old friends, Pammachius and his cousin Marcella, a translation of one of Theophilus's three Paschal letters against Origenism, see ep.98. In the accompanying letter, Jerome sometimes addresses the heretics he is attacking directly, suggesting that the letter was written for a larger audience than his two friends. The Theophilus who composed the Paschal letters was a contemporary bishop of Alexandria, who had also begun sympathetic to Origen, but prodded both by Jerome and by events, eventually took a stronger stand. Pammachius was another old friend of Jerome's, and Paula's son-in-law, married to her daughter Paulina. Marcella, according to Jerome, ep.127 (Epistolae 426.html), played an important role in the development of the Origenist controversy at Rome. Upset by the number of people she saw misled by Origenist ideas, particularly by Rufinus's amended translation, Marcella collected evidence and wrote several letters [not extant] asking Origenists to defend themselves. See Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy, The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton: Princeton University, 1992).

Printed source:

Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae, ed. Isidorus Hilberg, 3 v. (New York: Johnson, 1970, repr.CSEL, 1910-18), ep.97

Date:

402?