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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