It is likely in Syria that Jerome began formulating an argument that the intellectual labor of scholarship was equal to, if not greater than, the manual labor of the monks of Syria and Egypt he so admired. For although he’d afterward frequently invoke his holy poverty as an ascetic, historian Peter Brown notes that “a monk such as Jerome both claimed to be an advocate of total poverty and at the same time spent his life in the shadow of great libraries. He was tied irrevocably to wealthy persons who paid for the libraries on which his literary endeavors depended.”3 Indeed, “In Antioch he had depended on the library of Evagrius. In Rome he had sought out the patronage of [Pope] Damasus. From 385 (when he left Rome) until his death (around 420) he lived in Bethlehem, drawing on a library in a monastery built, endowed, and even fortified for him by the Roman widow Paula.”4
After his time in Syria, Jerome journeyed back to Rome whereupon he presented himself to Pope Damasus as an ascetic, dedicated to poverty and chastity, but whose scholarly work nevertheless required great investments of cash. Jerome had come to Rome to work for Pope Damasus “on matters that require profound leisure, hard work and much money.”5 While in Rome, he also made himself available to, and then received financial support from, a circle of wealthy women, including the wealthy widow Paula. His close relationship to these Roman women patrons would forever after raise a collective eyebrow among his many critics.
In 382, Pope Damasus called upon Jerome to begin a new translation of the Bible from Greek into Latin in order to replace conflicting Latin versions from previous centuries.6 The scope of this project would expand, and the fruit of his scholarly labor would eventually become known as the Vulgate. This was a massive labor of scholarly translation that would occupy Jerome for many years, including past the fateful point of his patron Pope Damasus’ death in 384.
From his own writings, it is clear that Jerome fully expected to become Pope upon Damasus’ death. He later reflected that all of Rome had been behind him: “Before I came to know the palace of holy Paula, all Rome was enthusiastic for me. In the judgment of almost all, I was worthy of the rank of highest bishop. My stylish pen gave voice to Damasus himself.”7 Yet Jerome had misread the situation. Instead, Jerome’s rigor, his tendency to lambast critics, and his relationship to the circle of women patrons, meant that he had made many enemies. Upon Damasus’ death, Jerome had to leave Rome for Bethlehem and was never to return. He was eventually followed to Bethlehem by his patron Paula and her daughter Eustochius. In Bethlehem, Paula would set up a large home for Jerome and other ascetics – indeed, a fortified palace - equipped with a library, and “she had charge of Jerome’s personal welfare, which she found no light undertaking.” 8 It was there, under the roof of the palace that Paula built, that Jerome completed the Vulgate and wrote treatises against his many critics, including his most abusive, Contra Vigilantius, which is the focus of this chapter.
Contra Vigilantius is a polemic against a priest from Gaul who questioned ascetics like Jerome’s insistence on consecrated virginity, the cultic adoration of the bones and ashes of Christian apostles and martyrs, the crude transmission and trading of these bodily bits, and the all-night vigils spent in front of the costly golden vessels in which these relics were displayed. Most important for this discussion of wealth and power, however, is Vigilantius’ critique of Jerome’s fundraising efforts on behalf of the ascetic communities in Jerusalem.
Although we only hear Vigilantius’ arguments through Jerome’s abuse, Vigilantius critiqued the wealthy of his area for sending monies in support of new ascetic communities in Jerusalem, and argued instead that it would be far better for that money to be directed to the local churches and the local poor.9 In fourth century Gaul, “local clergymen resented the drain of gifts that were made by the rich to support ascetics, especially ascetics settled at the far end of the Mediterranean. They preached that the local rich should use their wealth to give to the local poor and to the local churches.”10
The arguments that Jerome lays out in Contra Vigilantius are revealing of the way that sex and money had already become linked in many Christians’ minds by the late 4th century. Jerome argued that the celibacy and poverty of ascetics like himself were the characteristics of a new spiritual elite he called “the holy poor.” Jerome attacked Vigilantius’ critiques of clerical celibacy, the cult of the martyrs, and the expenses associated with the worship of relics, and in doing so, offers a tour of biblical citations used to justify such expenses, a few of which are still regularly cited in Christian communities today.
Jerome ultimately invokes Paul’s Jerusalem collection and the parable of the unjust steward to argue that 1) not only are the new ascetic communities of Jerusalem worthy of these financial gifts but 2) insomuch as ascetics represent ‘the holy poor’, they are actually more worthy than the materially destitute whom he describes as “filled with lust.” The spiritual poverty and sexual purity of “the holy poor” therefore makes ascetics more worthy of financial support than the immoral poor whom Jerome cannot imagine as being blessed by God. Historian Peter Brown is unsparing in his assessment of the long-term impact of this argument in the life of the church, for with Jerome there is a replacement of “the poor” with “the holy poor” of monks and nuns, a shift which he describes as bringing to an end an ancient form of Christianity. Whereas previously it was the materially poor who were thought to have a closer relationship to God, Jerome signaled a new age in which this would become the realm of ascetics.
Contra Vigilantius
Contra Vigilantius opens a window into the competing factions of the 4th century church, and speaks of a period in Christian history when asceticism was not a revered tradition but was being actively questioned and criticized. The region of Gaul – modern day France – appears to have been one such place where there was widespread resistance to asceticism’s emphasis on clerical celibacy and poverty. Vigilantius’ critiques represented a more widespread questioning of “the silent protest” of asceticism. David Hunter notes, “Vigilantius’ objections to clerical celibacy, ascetic renunciation, and relic piety appear to be consonant with much of clerical opinion in Gaul at this time,” and “At the very least it can be said that Vigilantius voiced concerns that were widespread among the Gallic clergy of his day and that his views may not have been far out of the mainstream of clerical opinion.”11
As representative as Vigilantius’ voice was, however, it is also clear from the bristling nature of Jerome’s letter that the contention between himself and Vigilantius was also personal. For Jerome and Vigilantius knew one another, including through an awkward incident that may have ultimately influenced Vigilantius’ views on clerical celibacy.
The first time Vigilantius’ name appears in Jerome’s writings is the result of a visit he made to the Holy Land during the summer of 395 to join an ascetic circle which included Jerome, Ambrose, Paulinus of Nola, and Sulpicius. Jerome afterward refers to Vigilantius as a ‘holy presbyter’ but discreetly flags that Vigilantius had had to leave Bethlehem abruptly after an awkward incident which Jerome, at that point, refused to describe. Ten years later, however, in Contra Vigilantius, Jerome describes an incident in which Vigilantius was startled awake by an earthquake and was found by the brothers to be praying naked.12 Jerome says that unlike Adam and Eve who experienced shame at their nakedness, “you, who were stripped alike of your shirt and of your faith, in the sudden terror which overwhelmed you, and with the fumes of your last night's booze still hanging about you, showed your wisdom by exposing your nakedness in only too evident a manner to the eyes of the brethren.”13 Jerome uses this incident to embarrass Vigilantius and to suggest that his critique of celibacy is rooted in Vigilantius’ sexual impropriety.
By the time that Jerome writes Contra Vigilantius in 406, more than ten years after this awkward incident had taken place, Vigilantius had joined his fellow Christians in Gaul – including his bishop – in arguing against the idealization of celibacy as a requirement for clergy. Vigilantius argued that Jerome and other ascetics’ disparagement of sex – including of sex within marriage – was unhealthy. Jerome attacks Vigilantius for suggesting that deacons and priests should be married before they are ordained and should not have to remain continent within that marriage. Jerome concludes his treatise by saying, “I will keep vigil for a whole night on his behalf and on behalf of his companions (whether they be his disciples or masters), who think that no man is worthy of Christ’s ministry unless he is married and his wife is pregnant.”14
For Jerome, Vigilantius’ more moderate views on sexuality, including support for married clergy, was not the heroic stuff of the ascetic spiritual elite that Jerome deemed “the holy poor.” The historian Edward McManners offers an intriguing insight into why these “holy poor” may have emerged in the fourth century. With Christianity now being the religion of the Roman imperial elite, “Upper-class Christians were indistinguishable from their pagan fellows in their life-style. This is what worried many of them, especially the more serious-minded.”15 The fascination with asceticism emerged, then, as a way for wealthier Christians to set themselves apart from their pagan counterparts. “The ascetic life, previously most popular in the Eastern provinces, now came to appeal widely to western aristocrats, men and women, virgins and widows.”16 In many cases, this meant wealthy Christians became patrons of ascetic communities. In other cases, wealthy women such as Paula were encouraged by the likes of Jerome to set themselves physically apart, and to transform their palaces into private monasteries for monks and nuns, thus “closing the doors of their palaces against an outside world that was eager less for their bodies than for their money.”17
In addition to arguing against clerical celibacy, Vigilantius made “the only frontal attack on the cult of saints to appear in Latin Christianity”, an attack directed at the splendor of shrines “with their shimmering mosaics, altars sheathed in imperial purple, and vast candelabra in which oil lamps burned day and night.”18 Vigilantius critiqued the carrying of relics in expensive vessels, the lighting of candles during the day, and the elaborate greeting of Christian relics -- all acts “self-consciously modelled after the imperial adventus”, a ceremony which celebrated the arrival of a Roman emperor in a city.19
An exasperated Jerome defends these practices by saying that when respect was paid to idols, such ceremony was rightly to be abhorred; yet insomuch as it was the martyrs who were now being venerated, the ceremony should be allowed.20 Further, he justifies the significant expenses incurred by such veneration by invoking the woman who poured oil and fragrance on Jesus’ body, an argument still regularly used to justify liturgical expenses that go well beyond the relative simplicity of perfumed ointment in an alabaster jar. “Once upon a time even the Apostles pleaded that the ointment was wasted, but they were rebuked by the voice of the Lord. Christ did not need the ointment, nor do martyrs need the light of tapers; and yet that woman poured out the ointment in honour of Christ, and her heart's devotion was accepted.”21
The “Holy Poor”
As was the case on sexuality, Vigilantius voiced a more moderate position on wealth, for he advised that Christians shouldn’t dispossess all they owned at once but should give larger and larger amounts to the local church and local poor from their wealth’s gradual increase. Vigilantius, therefore, articulated where many modern Christians stand on both sexuality and wealth today. In contrast, Jerome accuses Vigilantius of diluting the force of Jesus’ parable to the rich young ruler. Jerome writes, “As for his argument that they who keep what they have, and distribute among the poor, little by little, the increase of their property, act more wisely than they who sell their possessions, and once for all give all away, not I but the Lord shall make answer: If you will be perfect, go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow Me. He speaks to him who wishes to be perfect, who, with the Apostles, leaves father, ship, and net. The man whom you approve stands in the second or third rank; yet we welcome him provided it be understood that the first is to be preferred to the second, and the second to the third.”22
Jerome therefore defends Jesus’ insistence on complete dispossession, and insists the wealthy are to give everything they own the poor at once -- yet it is a very particular version of “the poor” that Jerome has in mind.
In part 14 of Contra Vigilantius, Jerome addresses Vigilantius’ argument that wealthy patrons’ money should be kept for the local church and the local poor: “You will reply that every one can do this in his own country, and that there will never be wanting poor who ought to be supported with the resources of the Church.” Jerome argues against supporting the materially poor by pitting them against those ‘holy poor’ who are members of the household of faith: “And we do not deny that doles should be distributed to all poor people, even to Jews and Samaritans, if the means will allow. But the Apostle teaches that alms should be given to all, indeed, especially, however, to those who are of the household of faith.” Jerome then employs the parable of the unjust steward wherein Jesus enigmatically advises his followers to make friends for themselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, those friends might welcome them into eternal homes. Citing this parable, he questions whether the materially poor could ever have such eternal homes: “What! Can those poor creatures, with their rags and filth, lorded over as they are by raging lust, can they who own nothing, now or hereafter, have eternal habitations?”
For Jerome, the answer was clearly “no.” It was inconceivable to Jerome that the poor - on the grounds of material poverty alone - should be considered worthy recipients of wealthy patrons’ support. In this, he joined Clement of Alexandria in resisting the notion that Jesus considered the poor to be blessed. Jerome and Clement’s attacks on the character and centrality of the poor are, in part, what the father of liberation theology, Gustavo Gutierrez, was arguing against in the 20th century Latin American context. Gutierrez contended that when one has genuine friendships and solidarity with poor people and poor communities, the scriptures reveal a God whose universal love is nevertheless expressed through a preferential option for the poor.23 Significantly, and in stark contrast to Jerome and Clement, he argues that Christians must also make a preferential option for the poor “not because the poor are better or more moral than the powerful, but because the God revealed in the scriptures is a God who chooses to be revealed preferentially among the outcasts of society, a God who chooses the poor to be the bearers of the Good News, a God crucified alongside the victims of history.”24
Gutierrez’ focus on God’s choice rather than the character of the poor would likely have come as a surprise to Jerome, for Jerome helped to form a long tradition of focusing on “the poor in spirit” while disparaging the character – full of “raging lust” - of the materially poor. This disparagement continues as he contrasts the poor with the ascetics who engage in the life of the mind. “No doubt it is not the poor simply, but the poor in spirit, who are called blessed; those of whom it is written, Blessed is he who gives his mind to the poor and needy; the Lord shall deliver him in the evil day. But the fact is, in supporting the poor of the common people, what is needed is not mind, but money. In the case of the holy poor, the mind has blessed exercises, since you give to one who receives with a blush, and when he has received is grieved, that while sowing spiritual things he must reap your carnal things.”25
Jerome’s disparaging view of the materially poor, in contrast with the sexual purity and scholarship of the so-called holy poor, supports his larger argument for the wealthy to continue sending funds to Jerusalem in support of ascetic communities rather than to support local churches and the local poor. Jerome cites Paul’s Jerusalem Collection when he says that Christians have always been sending their money to Jerusalem in support of the faithful – not just the generally poor, but rather the (now ascetic) saints of the holy places: “I say what the blessed Apostle Paul says in nearly all his Epistles; and he makes it a rule for the Churches of the Gentiles that, on the first day of the week, that is, on the Lord's day, contributions should be made by every one which should be sent up to Jerusalem for the relief of the saints, and that either by his own disciples, or by those whom they should themselves approve; and if it were thought fit, he would himself either send, or take what was collected.”
Referring to Vigilantius’ argument that monies should be kept locally, Jerome goes on to say, “Might [Paul] not have distributed in some other part of the world, and in the infant Churches which he was training in his own faith, the gifts he had received from others? But he longed to give to the poor of the holy places who, abandoning their own little possessions for the sake of Christ, turned with their whole heart to the service of the Lord.” In doing so, Jerome equates support for ‘the saints’ of Jerusalem who were experiencing famine with ‘the holy poor’ of ascetic scholars and students. He also invokes the Jewish custom of supporting students of Torah, whose study in the Holy Land was supported by synagogues from all over the world26: “And this custom continues in Judea to the present day, not only among us, but also among the Hebrews, so that they who meditate in the law of the Lord, day and night, and have no father upon earth except the Lord alone, may be cherished by the aid of the synagogues and of the whole world; that there may be equality — not that some may be refreshed while others are in distress, but that the abundance of some may support the need of others.”27
Like a skilled development officer, Jerome made an argument for why his community was more deserving of receiving the contributions of the wider Church and why the wealthy, in particular, needed to send their monies in support of a scholarly version of “holy poverty.” In doing so, however, he disparages the materially poor as and instead says that it is the holy poor who are more deserving of the wealthy’s contributions. Historian Peter Brown writes that “Only by giving to holy monks in the distant Holy Land—and not to the faceless and unsavory poor of their own region—could the rich engage in a ‘spiritual exchange’ that was certain to place their treasure in heaven.”28
For Brown, Jerome’s “holy poor” signals the tragic end of a form of ancient Christianity, one in which Jesus’ statement of “blessed are the poor” was held to refer to material poverty, and these poor were considered to have a closer relationship to God. “In this way, monks gradually came to eclipse the poor as the privileged others of the Christian imagination. The monks alone had become the ‘holy poor.’ In a contemporary monastic rule, lay gifts were instantly sanctified and made effective by being brought into the chapel to be prayed over by the nuns or monks. It is a solution whose high-pitched emphasis on the ‘holy poor’—on monks and nuns to the exclusion of the real poor—as the only truly reliable, because truly other recipients of alms for the safety of the soul would have struck a fourth-century Christian as vaguely Manichaean. With this shift from the poor to the monks as the primary intercessors for the sins of all Christians, an ancient Christianity died.”29
----
Frederick Douglas wrote, “When men oppress their fellow men, the oppressor ever finds, in the character of the oppressed, a full justification for his oppression.” In Jerome, one finds “the most learned of the Latin fathers of the church and among the greatest of biblical scholars” making the biblical case for disparaging the destitute and privileging the new spiritual elite of monks and nuns who constituted the holy poor. That he did so in order to gain financial support for the blessed exercises of the mind is revealing of the long and intertwined relationship between knowledge creation, wealth, and power.
For Jerome’s scholarship on behalf of the church required patrons such as Pope Damasus and Paula, extraordinary leisure, and vast sums of money, and so he invested his time and significant abilities in making the case that the ‘holy poor’ such as himself were more worthy recipients of that wealth than the materially poor whom he tellingly disparaged as ‘full of raging lust.’ Diarmaid McCullough notes, “Traditionally [scholarship] had been an occupation associated with elite wealth, and even in the case of this monk in Bethlehem it was backed up with an expensive infrastructure of assistants and secretaries. Studying and writing, he insinuated, were as demanding, difficult, and heroically self-denying as any physical extravagance of Syrian monks, or even the drudgery of manual labor and craft which were the daily occupations of monastic communities in Egypt.”30 He continues by noting that if Jerome had not been as successful in this argument, “it might have been far more difficult for countless monks to justify the hours that they spent reading and enjoying ancient texts, and copying them out for the benefit of posterity. Ultimately the beneficiary was Western civilization.”31
Be that as it may, it is once again the poor whose character is impugned and who get left behind in the process as Jerome helped the Church “find in the character of the oppressed, a full justification for his oppression.” In Jerome, the transition beyond the Gospel of Luke’s beatitudes which proclaimed “blessed are the poor” and “woe to you who are rich” is almost complete, and the Magnificat’s dream of reversal has begun to feel like a distant memory.
1 Attwater, Donald. Jerome: 181-182
2 Attwater, Donald. Jerome: 181-182
3 Brown, Peter. 275-276
4 Brown, Peter. 275-276
5 Citation Needed
6 McCullough, Diarmaid 294
7 15. Jerome, Letter 45.2.2, 54.1:324
8 Attwater, Donald. Paula: 261
9 Hunter, David G. "Vigilantius of Calagurris and Victricius of Rouen: Ascetics, Relics, and Clerics in Late Roman Gaul." Journal of Early Christian Studies, vol. 7 no. 3, 1999, p. 401-430. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/earl.1999.0061.
10 Brown, Peter. Through the Eye of a Needle (pp. 280-282). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
11 Hunter, David G. "Vigilantius of Calagurris and Victricius of Rouen: Ascetics, Relics, and Clerics in Late Roman Gaul." Journal of Early Christian Studies, vol. 7 no. 3, 1999, p. 401-430. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/earl.1999.0061. Pages 401 and 403
12 Hunter, David G. "Vigilantius of Calagurris and Victricius of Rouen: Ascetics, Relics, and Clerics in Late Roman Gaul." Journal of Early Christian Studies, vol. 7 no. 3, 1999, p. 401-430. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/earl.1999.0061. Page 405
13 Contra Vigilantium 11 https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3010.htm
14 Contra Vigilantium 17 (PL 23:368)
15 McManners, John. Illustrated History. Page 67
16 McManners, John. Illustrated History. Page 67
17 Brown, Peter. Page 265
18 Brown, Peter. Through the Eye of a Needle (pp. 280-282). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
19 Hunter, David G. "Vigilantius of Calagurris and Victricius of Rouen: Ascetics, Relics, and Clerics in Late Roman Gaul." Journal of Early Christian Studies, vol. 7 no. 3, 1999, p. 401-430. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/earl.1999.0061. Page 420
20 Contra Vigilantius, 7 https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3010.htm
21 Contra Vigilantius – Section 7 - https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3010.htm
22 Contra Vigilantius – 14 - https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3010.htm
23 Goizueta, Roberto. “Liberation Theology 1: Gustavo Gutierrez” in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, Page 282
24 Goizueta, Roberto. “Liberation Theology 1: Gustavo Gutierrez” in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, Page 283
25 Contra Vigilantius – 14 - https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3010.htm
26 Brown, Peter. Through the Eye of a Needle (pp. 280-282). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
27 Citation needed
28 Brown, Peter. Through the Eye of a Needle (pp. 280-282). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
29 Brown, Peter. Through the Eye of a Needle (p. 517). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
30 McCullough, Diarmaid. 295
31 McCullough, Diarmaid. 295-296
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