A letter from Jerome (402-04)

Translated letter:

1.1. And I learned from your [pl.] letters and those of many others that I am reproached in the school of Tyrannus [Acts 19:9] by my enemies from the tongue of my dogs [Ps.67:24] that I turned the books “Peri Archon” [Grk] into Latin; and — singular impudence — they accuse the doctor that he produced poison, as if they would protect the quack not by his innocence but by the shared nature of his crime, as if the number of sinners diminished the sin and the accusation were against persons not things.. . . [Jerome complains both that his enemies attack him secretly, asking why if they speak the truth they are afraid to say it publically, and that one who claims to be a friend {Rufinus} attacks him by praising him repeatedly as a proponent of Origen.] You see that we understand his prudence and that he played often in the strophic schools of mocking preaching… [2. Jerome lists others who translated or cited Origen, Hilary, Ambrose, Victorinus, whom Rufinus does not mention, though if he is learned enough to translate Greek he must know Latin writers, but prefers not to associate Jerome with them in praise or attack.] 3. I have your letters in which you write that I am accused; and you urge me to answer the accuser lest if I am silent, I seem to admit the charge. Which I have answered, I grant; and though tired, I have so observed the laws of friendship that I defend myself without the accusation of the accuser and, what one friend reproached me with at Rome, I say is uttered by many in the whole world, so that I do not seem to respond to the man but to the charges.. . . 6. [Rufinus's adherents object that Jerome has translated things repugnant to the faith from Origen into Latin.] To which the brief and succinct answer is : your letters, brother Pammachius, and those of your [relatives] compelled me, saying that they had been deceitfully translated by another and things had been interpolated or added or changed. And in case I might have little faith in the letters, you [pl.] sent copies of the translation, with the little preface praising me. [When he read them and compared them to Origen's Greek, he saw that they had been altered for Roman sensibility in reference to the trinity and various other doctrinal matters.]

Original letter:

1.1. Et vestris et multorum litteris, didici obici mihi in schola Tyranni, a lingua canum meorum ex inimicis ab ipso, cur “Peri Archon” [Grk] libros in latinum verterim; et — o impudentiam singularem! — accusant medicum quod venena prodiderit, ut scilicet pharmacopolam suum non innocentiae merito, sed criminis communione tueantur, quasi culpam numerus peccantium minuat et in personis, non in rebus, sit accusatio.. . . Videtis nos intellegere prudentiam eius et praedicationis diasyrticae strophis in scholis saepe lusisse.. . . 3. Teneo epistulas vestras, quibus accusatum esse me scribitis; et hortamini ut respondeam criminanti, ne, si tacuerim, videar crimen agnoscere. Ad quas respondi, fateor; et quamvis laesus, sic amicitiae iura servavi ut me sine accusantis accusatione defenderem et, quod unus Romae amicus obiecerat, a multis in toto orbe inimicis dicerem iactitatum, ut non viderer homini, sed criminibus respondere.. . . 6. . . . Ad quod brevis et succincta responsio est: Tuae me, frater Pammachi, et tuorum litterae conpulerunt, dicentes illos ab alio fradulenter esse translatos and interpolata nonnulla, vel addita vel mutata. Ac ne parum epistulis haberem fidem, misistis exemplaria eiusdem translationis, cum praefatiuncula laudatrice mea.

Historical context:

Rufinus and Jerome had been close friends who became bitter enemies as a result of their different approaches to Origen's thought. Both of them had studied and translated Origen, though Rufinus modified the heretical passages and Jerome translated them literally, revealing the problems. Both were attacked for their interest in Origen, but Rufinus defended Origen while Jerome attacked both Origen and Rufinus in the course of defending his own orthodoxy. A conciliatory letter Jerome wrote to Rufinus was suppressed by Jerome's friends (as he reports to Rufinus in this Apologia, 1.12); they released instead a critical one that Jerome had intended to be private, and that is the one Rufinus saw. Rufinus attacked Jerome for his attachment to pagan authors, for teaching them to children, for exaggeration in his satirical descriptions of Christian vices, and for his malicious pen. Jerome ridiculed Rufinus, accusing him of ignorance and self-indulgence, though or perhaps because there was some validity to his accusations. The work, like the translation of Theophilus's paschal letter against Origenism, ep.98, was addressed to the cousins, Pammachius and Marcella. 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. Marcella, upset by the number of people she saw misled by Origenist ideas, particularly by Rufinus's amended translation, 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). There is no separate letter or prologue to this work, but only a few remarks to Pammachius and Marcella, others to Pammachius alone, in the opening paragraphs; only those remarks that are addressed to both of them are cited here, along with brief summaries in brackets.

Printed source:

Hieronymi ad Pammachium et Marcellam pro se contra accusatorem defensio, Apologia contra Rufinum, CCSL 79 and Apologia adversus libros Rufini missa ad Pammachium et Marcellam, PL23 c.415

Date:

402-04