Apology against Jerome 2.40–2.47

But I set out the reason why I was led to translate so that he may know that I brought these things out not from rivalry (as he usually acts) or any emulation, but from the necessity which I explained above, as material for a good and useful work, so that the man who was himself building a new work, though unskilled, might take from it something of order or of colour from the old. Or do we not see that old buildings have been of use to new ones? And sometimes a stone is taken from the hidden and remote parts of an old house to decorate the front of a new house and adorn its entrance. And sometimes the whole building of a new construction is made firm by the solidity of one old beam. Let us then now take action against those who rightly use old things in new ones, saying: "You may not transfer material from an old house to a new one unless you join beam to beam and stone to stone, unless you transfer portico from portico, room from room; and this cannot be done unless you transfer privy from privy and sewer from sewer. For a great house must have these too." For this is translating word from word, which you formerly judged improper, but now proper. But you defend as permitted to yourself even what is not permitted, while you charge as crimes against us what is permitted. For when you changed the sacred writings and divine volumes, you wish to be praised; we, even if in imitation of you we pass over something in men's discourses which we believe edifies less, you do not pardon in the very things in which you gave the example.

But let him do these things as he thinks lawful or expedient for himself. I meanwhile, to review at the end what we have answered here and there in our defence: since he said of me that I could not be a heretic without him, I showed my faith, and proved that on the resurrection of the flesh it is rather he who errs, who wrote that the body which will rise is frail. I showed too how he erased the difference of the sexes, and said that bodies are reduced to souls and women to men. I also set out the reasons for my translation, most just, I think: that not stirred by rivalry or desire of glory, but moved by the fear of God, I brought over supplies of old material to benefit the buildings of a new construction, and cleaned old weapons already covered with rust, not to stir up civil war but to repel the enemy's. I also inserted the very chapter on which they laid forging hands, and showed that the falsification of blasphemy against the Son of God and the Holy Spirit was foreign to my name and was committed by their crime and by them.

In each of the points also on which he said he was censuring Origen, so that he might be believed to be striking at us and defaming the work of our translation, I showed from his own commentaries, from which he had said his faith ought to be looked for and proved, that he himself wrote the same things he blames in him about the state of the soul, the restoration of all things, and the devil and the fugitive angels. I convicted him also of having said that souls are held bound in this body as in a prison. I proved that he wrote in these very commentaries that the whole rational creation, that is, angels and souls, is one body. I showed that the league of perjury dwells, most sacredly kept, with no one as with him. I convicted him of teaching in these very commentaries that the truth and the more perfect doctrine are not to be published to all. Next, I demonstrated that the secular books about which he had said to Christ, as he sat on the tribunal and had him beaten, "If ever I read or possess books of the Gentiles, I have denied you," he now not only reads and possesses but also places in them all the boast of his learning, so much so that he even boasts of having been introduced to logic through the Isagoge of the most impious Porphyry. And while he said that it was the doctrines of the Gentiles to think in any way about the soul or the other creatures, I showed that he himself said something much fouler than the Gentiles, that God has a mother-in-law. And when he had said that he mentioned Origen in only two short prefaces, as a man of genius rather than an apostolic man, I brought forward for brevity's sake only ten short prefaces, in which he asserted him not only as an apostolic man but as the second teacher of the churches after the apostles, and one whom he followed together with all prudent men.

Besides, we have plainly shown that it is his habit to disparage all good men, and to think himself somebody by censuring every man of repute and anyone who has some name in letters. I showed also how unworthily he tore the ministers and priests of Christ; that he did not spare even the monks and the very virgins whom he had praised, or the continent, and defamed every order and rank of Christians in foul books; how unworthily and basely he tore the holy man Ambrose, the memory of whose splendid life still flourishes in all minds; that he has placed Didymus, whom he had once set among the seeing prophets and apostles, now among those who teach things contrary to the churches; and that he marks all writers whatever, old or new, now with lack of skill, now with folly; and finally that he does not spare even martyrs. And all these things, as I said above, I proved not by outsiders but by his own writings and by his own testimony, bringing forward testimonies on each point from those very books most approved by him: books which, though he says he repents of all his other sayings or writings (not because he truly repents, but because, hard pressed, he came to this, that either repentance had to be feigned or he could not bite or wound whom he wished), he nevertheless, as I said, excepted for himself alone, as least to be repented of. And therefore I did not wish now to touch his other writings, so that he might be convicted almost solely from these, for which he had himself already closed off the place of repentance. After all this, I showed that he has changed the sacred books which the apostles had entrusted to the churches as the faithful deposit of the Holy Spirit, and that he who calls it audacity to translate the works of men has himself, with a greater sacrilege, overturned the divine oracles.

It remains now that everyone who learns these things give his favour to one or other of us with such judgment as he himself desires to be judged with by God, and not hurt his own soul by giving unjust favour to another. Let that holy man Pammachius too know through you, my dearest son Apronianus, whose letter my friend (Jerome) brought forward in his invective or accusation, that with Christ's help one should favour innocence, not partisanship, and that in the cause of truth one should act not with zeal for a side but with religion. For it is the Lord's command that we judge not by appearance but judge with right judgment. For as in each of the least of his own it is Christ who hungers and thirsts and is naked, and it is he who is refreshed and clothed, so in those who are judged unjustly it is he who is wickedly judged; and for those who are hated without cause he will say: "You hated me without cause." How does he think this cause, and this deed of his, will be judged at the tribunal of Christ, when his conscience holds that he withdrew from the hands of readers Jerome's books written against Jovinian, which were already being publicly read and censured, and restrained and rebuked those who blamed them, and sent his books back to the author himself, pointing out what came under censure, so that he might correct it or remedy the matter as best he could; but my sheets, not books, unfinished and uncorrected, taken away by the theft and fraud of some rascal and brought to him, when he had me present there, he neither offered to me nor complained of, nor deigned even to rebuke or censure me, even through some friend, or even through an enemy, but sent them to the East and stirred up the tongue of a man who did not know how to restrain it? What would he have done against religion if he had rather met me face to face? Were we so unworthy of his conversation that we did not deserve even to be censured by him? For us too Christ died, and for our redemption shed his blood. Sinners indeed, but we are of his flock, and are counted among his little sheep. But since for God's sake he despised his nobility and made himself wholly equal to the lowly, we confess his work in the faith of Christ to be excellent indeed, and such as ought to be an example to others; therefore we did not wish him to be carried away by human partisanship and contentions, lest he suffer any loss in his faith. Certainly, when he reads that the very things for which that master Jerome censures others he himself taught in his chosen commentaries, even after his repentance, we shall see how true a judgment he keeps. For his former error will be thought to have been one of ignorance if knowledge corrects it. We, though compelled by necessity, have tried to answer him who struck us most bitterly; yet for this very thing we ask pardon if we have perhaps pursued anything rather harshly, because God is witness of our conscience that we have kept silent about many more things than we have brought out; but we could not keep wholly silent, against our conscience, before one who accused us, since some would have counted our silence almost a loss to their faith.

After I had dictated these things, a certain brother who had come to us from you in the City, sitting by me as I read it over, said that one further point of defence had been left out, which he had heard charged by the detractors there. He was speaking of what is written in my short preface, where I said of this man who now persecutes and accuses me, that in what he translated of Origen there seemed to be some stumbling blocks in the Greek, which he so cleansed in translating that the Latin reader would find nothing in them at variance with our faith. "They say," he said, "of this chapter: 'You see how he both praised his translation and himself bore witness that what that man translated is without stumbling block, and promised that he would follow him. Why, then, are not the things he himself translated free from offence, as he himself testified the other's writings were?'"

It is no wonder that I always deserve to be blamed wherever I have praised this man. And rightly so. Yet let us come to the point. I said that in his Latin translation he cleansed whatever seemed stumbling blocks to the faith in the Greek, and not undeservedly; yet so that I may show that the same things were done by me. For just as he, in the Homilies on Isaiah, translated the two seraphim as the Son and the Holy Spirit, and, adding of his own, "Let no one think there is a difference of nature in the Trinity when the offices of the names are distinguished," believed he could thereby remedy the stumbling blocks; so we too, by taking away some things, changing others, or adding, tried to bring the author's sense to a more correct path of understanding. What did we do here that was different, or contrary, or not the same? But because I judged his writings without malice and slander, I looked not at what was open to detraction but at what the translator had intended. But he, who seeks occasions for slander, censures in my writings what he himself wrote before me. And indeed I am to be blamed, if what he wrote is right by my judgment but to be condemned by his. This, so far as concerns the faith of the Trinity, where certainly a charge of blasphemy is involved, that he said the two seraphim are the Son and the Holy Spirit, if he is judged by his own judgment, which he uses against me. But by my judgment, which I passed on his writings without intent of slander, he is absolved for what he added of his own to explain the author's sense.

On the resurrection of the flesh, I think our translation contains the same things that are preached in the churches. The other things, said about the reasons of created beings, we have already said above do not belong to faith in the Godhead. But if he now calls into slander things which before had no stumbling block, I do not forbid him, if it pleases him, to revoke that judgment of mine by which he could have been absolved, and to put forward his own, by which he ought to be bound. My judgment of him, then, is not to be thought blameworthy, but his, who censures in others what he approves in himself. It is a new kind of judgment in which I myself defend my accuser, and in which he thinks me overcome only when he has proved himself guilty. Yet let us suppose that a synod of bishops follows your judgments and orders all books containing such things to be condemned with their authors, as they say. These books will be condemned first in Greek; and what is condemned in Greek is without doubt condemned in Latin. Let them come to your books: they will be found to contain the same things, according to your own judgment; they must be condemned with their author. And just as it profited Origen nothing that he was praised by you, so it will profit you nothing that you were excused by me. For I must follow the judgment of the catholic church, whether given against Origen's books or against yours.