Jerome, Latin in full EUSEBIUS HIERONYMUS, pseudonym SOPHRONIUS
- b. c. 347, Stridon, Dalmatia
- d. 419/420, Bethlehem, Palestine
Jerome Letter CXXVIII. To Gaudentius advises about his daughter, Pacatula
Will she hear the deep things of the apostle when all her delight is in nursery tales? Will she heed the dark sayings of the prophets when her nurse can frighten her by a frowning face? Or will she comprehend the majesty of the gospel, when its splendour dazzles the keenest intellect? Shall I urge her to obey her parents when with her chubby hand she beats her smiling mother? For such reasons as these my dear Pacatula must read some other time the letter that I send her now.
Meanwhile let her learn the alphabet, spelling, grammar, and syntax. To induce her to repeat her lessons with her little shrill voice, hold out to her as rewards cakes and mead and sweetmeats. She will make haste to perform her task if she hopes afterwards to get some bright bunch of flowers, some glittering bauble, some enchanting doll. She must also learn to spin, shaping the yarn with her tender thumb; for, even if she constantly breaks the threads, a day will come when she will no longer break them.
Then when she has finished her lessons she ought to have some recreation. At such times she may hang round her mother's neck, or snatch kisses from her relations.
Reward her for singing psalms (psalmos) that she may love what she has to learn. Her task will then become a pleasure to her and no compulsion will be necessary.
Letter LIV. To Furia. Jerome advises a widow on preserving her widowhood. Living in Rome was dangerous and Jerome warns her. Her sister may have taken vows in Bethlehem. He writes
13. Avoid the company of young men.
Let long baited youths dandified and wanton never be seen under your roof.
Repel a singer as you would some bane.
Hurry from your house women who live by playing and singing,
the devil's choir whose songs are the fatal ones of sirens.Do not arrogate to yourself a widow's license and appear in public preceded by a host of eunuchs. It is a most mischievous thing for those who are weak owing to their sex and youth to misuse their own discretion and to suppose that things are lawful because they are pleasant.
Oh! that you could see your sister (sent to Bethelem) and that it might be yours to hear the eloquence of her holy lips and to behold the mighty spirit which animates her diminutive frame. You might hear the whole contents of the old and new testaments come bubbling up out of her heart. Fasting is her sport, and prayer she makes her pastime. Like Miriam after the drowning Pharaoh she takes up her timbrel and sings to the virgin choir, "Let us sing to the Lord for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea."
She teaches her companions to be music girls but music girls for Christ, to be luteplayers but luteplayers for the Saviour. In this occupation she passes both day and night and with oil ready to put in the lamps she waits the coming of the Bridegroom. Do you therefore imitate your kinswoman. Let Rome have in you what a grander city than Rome, I mean Bethlehem, has in her.
14. "You have wealth and can easily therefore supply food to those who want it. Let virtue consume what was provided for self-indulgence; one who means to despise matrimony need fear no degree of want. Have about you troops of virgins whom you may lead into the king's chamber. Support widows that you may mingle them as a kind of violets with the virgins' lilies and the martyrs' roses."
However, in Jerome's work against Pelagius he accused him of winning the favor of his amazons:
"Who does not know that women should sing the praises of the Lord -- in their own chambers,
far removed from the meetings of men and the assemblies of the multitude?
But you permit what is not permissible, namely,
that they do what should be performed by them secretly
and without any witnesses as though they were lawfully constituted teachers."
Paul makes a clear distinciton between the uncovered prophesying of the Corinthian outside of the assembly (1 Cor. 11:5) with his forbidding the same singing or speaking in tongues in the assembly (1 Cor. 14).
In
Jerome's Letter LXXIX. To Salvina.
9. Take no well-curled steward to walk with you, no effeminate actor, no devilish singer of poisoned sweetness, no spruce and smooth-shorn youth. Let no theatrical compliments, no obsequious adulation be associated with you. Keep with you bands of widows and virgins; and let your consolers be of your own sex. The character of the mistress is judged by that of the maid. So long as you have with you a holy mother, so long as an aunt vowed to virginity is at your side, you ought not to neglect them and at your own risk to seek the company of strangers. Let the divine scripture be always in your hands, and give yourself so frequently to prayer that such shafts of evil thoughts as ever assail the young may thereby find a shield to repel them. It is difficult, nay more it is impossible, to escape the beginnings of those internal motions which the Greeks with much significance call propaqeiai that is `predispositions to passion.' The fact is that suggestions of sin tickle all our minds, and the decision rests with our own hearts either to admit or to reject the thoughts which come. The Lord of nature Himself says in the gospel:-"out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies."2457 It is clear from the testimony of another book that "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth,"2458 and that the soul wavers between the works of the flesh and of the spirit enumerated by the apostle,2459 desiring now the former and now the latter. For
From faults no mortal man is wholly free;
The best is he who has but few of them.2460
And, to quote the same poet,
At moles men cavil when they mark fair skins.2461
In Jerome's Letter CVII. To Laeta.
4. Thus must a soul be educated which is to be a temple of God. It must learn to hear nothing and to say nothing but what belongs to the fear of God. It must have no understanding of unclean words, and NO knowledge of the world's songs. Its tongue must be steeped while still tender in the sweetness of the psalms. Boys with their wanton thoughts must be kept from Paula: even her maids and female attendants must be separated from worldly associates. For if they have learned some mischief they may teach more. Get for her a set of letters made of boxwood or of ivory and called each by its proper name. Let her play with these, so that even her play may teach her something. And not only make hergrasp the right order of the letters and see that she forms their names into a rhyme, but constantly disarrange their order and put the last letters in the middle and the middle ones at the beginning that she may know them all by sight as well as by sound.
9. And let it be her task daily to bring to you
the flowers which she has culled from scripture. Let her learn
by heart so many verses in the Greek, but let her be
instructed in the Latin also. For, if the tender lips are not
from the first shaped to this, the tongue is spoiled by a
foreign accent and its native speech debased by alien
elements. You must yourself be her mistress, a model on which
she may form her childish conduct. Never either in you nor in
her father let her see what she cannot imitate without sin.
Remember both of you that you are the parents of a consecrated
virgin, and that your example will teach her more than your
precepts. Flowers are quick to fade and a baleful wind soon
withers the violet, the lily, and the crocus. Let her never
appear in public unless accompanied by you. Let her never
visit a church or a martyr's shrine unless with her mother.
Let no young man greet her with smiles; no dandy with curled
hair pay compliments to her. If our little virgin goes to keep
solemn eves and all-night vigils, let her not stir a hair's
breadth from her mother's side. She must not single out one of
her maids to make her a special favourite or a confidante.
What she says to one all ought to know. Let her choose for a
companion not a handsome well-dressed girl, able to warble a
song with liquid notes but one pale and serious, sombrely
attired and with the hue of melancholy. Let her take as her
model some aged virgin of approved faith, character, and
chastity, apt to instruct her by word and by example. She
ought to rise at night to recite prayers and psalms; to sing
hymns in the morning; at the third, sixth, and ninth hours to
take her place in the line to do battle for Christ; and,
lastly, to kindle her lamp and to offer her evening sacrifice.2709
In these occupations let her pass the day, and when night
comes let it find her still engaged in them. Let reading
follow prayer with her, and prayer again succeed to reading.
Time will seem short when employed on tasks so many and so
varied.
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