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Maybe God himself, he needs all of our help
It is not to the credit of the internet that all of the letters of Saint Jerome are not online in Latin: I had to extract the passage I wanted from the PDF of an article in French. I also miss my library.
When, many years ago, I had cut myself off from my home, my parents, my sister, my family—and, more challengingly, from my customary sumptuous meals—all for the sake of the kingdoms of heaven, and was on my way to Jerusalem there to wage my own war, I still could not forsake my library, which I had compiled at Rome with the utmost care and effort. And so, wretch that I was, I would fast in anticipation of Tullius. After night upon night of vigils, after the tears that the remembrance of my past sins called out from my innermost heart, I would find myself with Plautus in my hands. Whenever I came to myself and began to read one of the prophets, the unsophisticated style would grate on me; and because my blind eyes could not see the light, I blamed not my eyes, but the sun.
While the old serpent was toying thus with me, halfway through Lent, a fever soaked itself into my marrow, attacked my exhausted body, and without any respite—it is almost unbelievable in the telling—so wasted away my miserable limbs that I was scarcely hanging on to my bones. The funeral arrangements were already being made; the vital warmth of life, as all my body cooled around it, still beat only in my lukewarm breast; when suddenly I was snatched up in spirit and hauled before a judge's tribunal, where there was so much light and such a brilliance from those who stood around me that I threw myself flat on the earth and dared not look up. Questioned as to my situation, I replied that I was a Christian. And he who sat there—"Liar," he said, "you are a Ciceronian, not a Christian: where your treasury is, there is your heart as well." On the spot I could not speak, and between the blows—for he had ordered me to be beaten—I was tortured more by the fire of my conscience, as I repeated to myself that verse, but under the earth who will confess to you? Still I began to cry out and lament, have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy on me. This cry echoed among the lashes. Finally they fell to their knees before him who presided, those who stood by, and they prayed that he would look indulgently on my youth and lend me space to repent of my error, then to exact torture if ever again I read the literature of the Gentiles. I, who in the press of such a moment would have promised even more, promptly took an oath and on his name I swore: "Lord, if ever again I own worldly books, if ever again I read them, I have denied you."
With those words and that promise, I was returned to the upper world, and to the astonishment of all I opened eyes so rain-soaked with tears that even the incredulous were convinced of my distress. Nor, truly, was that mere sleep or the idle dreams that often play us false: the tribunal before which I lay is my witness, and the judgment I feared—may such an interrogation never happen to me again—is my witness, that my shoulders were black and blue, that even out of sleep I still felt the bruises, and that thereafter I read of divine matters with an enthusiasm with which I had never, in those days before, read of the world.
—Saint Jerome, Epistulae 22.30
This is about the only point in history where I feel kindly toward Saint Jerome. On the other hand, the outcome depresses me: what he learned from Cicero, he did use in the service of Christ, so he might as well (. . . and deeper than did ever plummet sound . . .) have kept his books. And been happy in them.
When, many years ago, I had cut myself off from my home, my parents, my sister, my family—and, more challengingly, from my customary sumptuous meals—all for the sake of the kingdoms of heaven, and was on my way to Jerusalem there to wage my own war, I still could not forsake my library, which I had compiled at Rome with the utmost care and effort. And so, wretch that I was, I would fast in anticipation of Tullius. After night upon night of vigils, after the tears that the remembrance of my past sins called out from my innermost heart, I would find myself with Plautus in my hands. Whenever I came to myself and began to read one of the prophets, the unsophisticated style would grate on me; and because my blind eyes could not see the light, I blamed not my eyes, but the sun.
While the old serpent was toying thus with me, halfway through Lent, a fever soaked itself into my marrow, attacked my exhausted body, and without any respite—it is almost unbelievable in the telling—so wasted away my miserable limbs that I was scarcely hanging on to my bones. The funeral arrangements were already being made; the vital warmth of life, as all my body cooled around it, still beat only in my lukewarm breast; when suddenly I was snatched up in spirit and hauled before a judge's tribunal, where there was so much light and such a brilliance from those who stood around me that I threw myself flat on the earth and dared not look up. Questioned as to my situation, I replied that I was a Christian. And he who sat there—"Liar," he said, "you are a Ciceronian, not a Christian: where your treasury is, there is your heart as well." On the spot I could not speak, and between the blows—for he had ordered me to be beaten—I was tortured more by the fire of my conscience, as I repeated to myself that verse, but under the earth who will confess to you? Still I began to cry out and lament, have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy on me. This cry echoed among the lashes. Finally they fell to their knees before him who presided, those who stood by, and they prayed that he would look indulgently on my youth and lend me space to repent of my error, then to exact torture if ever again I read the literature of the Gentiles. I, who in the press of such a moment would have promised even more, promptly took an oath and on his name I swore: "Lord, if ever again I own worldly books, if ever again I read them, I have denied you."
With those words and that promise, I was returned to the upper world, and to the astonishment of all I opened eyes so rain-soaked with tears that even the incredulous were convinced of my distress. Nor, truly, was that mere sleep or the idle dreams that often play us false: the tribunal before which I lay is my witness, and the judgment I feared—may such an interrogation never happen to me again—is my witness, that my shoulders were black and blue, that even out of sleep I still felt the bruises, and that thereafter I read of divine matters with an enthusiasm with which I had never, in those days before, read of the world.
—Saint Jerome, Epistulae 22.30
This is about the only point in history where I feel kindly toward Saint Jerome. On the other hand, the outcome depresses me: what he learned from Cicero, he did use in the service of Christ, so he might as well (. . . and deeper than did ever plummet sound . . .) have kept his books. And been happy in them.
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The slave mentality of the early Christians...
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Dear Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and all the saints and company of Heaven, please let St Jerome be reading Cicero right now, Amen.
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and because my blind eyes could not see the light, I blamed not my eyes, but the sun.
this is gorgeous.
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I think that would indeed have been heaven for him.
Dear Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and all the saints and company of Heaven, please let St Jerome be reading Cicero right now, Amen.
Amen!
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Every now and then I pick up Saint Augustine, and then I remember why I do this only every now and then . . .
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You're welcome. I hope Jake's well.
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I love
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Amen.
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He's responsible for the Latin Vulgate Bible, which he translated from the Greek and Hebrew and revised from an earlier Latin version. He also wrote scriptural commentaries, saints' lives, a respectable corpus of letters, and rather impressively vitriolic shots at various schisms and sects of late fourth- and early fifth-century Christianity. I'm pretty sure he's the patron saint of translators, and possibly librarians. But I wish he had been able to let himself keep his books of the world; if he loved them so much, I have trouble believing his God would have minded.
I've never been comfortable with the idea that abstinence from all worldly things is the best way to bring you closer to god
Indeed.
Brother Paul, master of the novices, had a complaint against one of his pupils, suspected of levity beyond what was permitted to youth and inexperience, in that the youngster had been heard singing in the cloisters, while he was employed in copying a prayer of St. Augustine, a secular song of scandalous import, purporting to be the lament of a Christian pilgrim imprisoned by the Saracens, and comforting himself by hugging to his breast the chemise given him at parting by his lover.
Brother Cadfael's mind jerked him back from incipient slumber to recognise and remember the song, beautiful and poignant. He had been in that Crusade, he knew the land, the Saracens, the haunting light and darkness of such a prison and such a pain. He saw Brother Jerome devoutly close his eyes and suffer convulsions of distress at the mention of a woman's most intimate garment. Perhaps because he had never been near enough to it to touch, thought Cadfael, still disposed to be charitable.
—Ellis Peters, Monk's Hood (1980)
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*grin* just so. ^_^
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The ideal is SUPPOSED to be that God is the most important thing in your life--the greatest Good, and all that--and that you cut out anything that keeps you from God. It's the same way that anything gets subordinated or discarded ithat satnds in the way of any other true passion. (Which is not to say say that people like St. Catharine didn't take denying themselves to an excessive degree, at which they lost sight of the original point). Jerome thought--we may disagree on how far he was right--that his love of literature was keeping him from God, not JUST because it was pagan, but because he loved it more than God and his Word...and therefore he cut it out of his life.
Religion is supposed to be beautiful? Well, yes, of course it is. But it's also supposed to be about reality; and the reality we live in is imperfect, and often sucks. As such, religion can't just be about the wonderfulness of the world: it has to deal with pain, and hard choices, and sacrifice.
( / fundie )
That said, it IS a rather depressing passage. And I third the hope that Jerome is now reading some well-written, fun literature (I would choose Cicero myself, but...)
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I understand that it's not because of paganism that Cicero has to go—Jerome mentions earlier how he's distanced himself from his family, who are presumably good Christians as well—I just think that fundamentally I do not agree that if one is to be passionate about God, one must not be passionate about anything else.
But it's also supposed to be about reality; and the reality we live in is imperfect, and often sucks. As such, religion can't just be about the wonderfulness of the world: it has to deal with pain, and hard choices, and sacrifice.
When did I demand that religion be only about the wonderfulness of the world? I should only prefer it not to contribute to the pain.
And I third the hope that Jerome is now reading some well-written, fun literature (I would choose Cicero myself, but...)
(Myself, I am not passionate about Cicero. But I can get behind Plautus.)
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Christianity doesn't intrinsically make me cry—like any other religion, it's the ways in which people employ it that bother me.