Resultados25 letters/passages
jerome · c. 396 · score 0.02
When they came, they spared neither religion, nor rank, nor age; they had no pity even for wailing infants. Children were forced to die before they could be said to have begun living, and little ones, oblivious to their fate, could be seen smiling in the hands of their killers. It was generally believed the invaders we …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.02
Like him too he had with him a Cerberus, not three headed but many headed, ready to seize and rend everything within his reach. He tore betrothed daughters from their mothers' arms and sold high-born maidens in marriage to those greediest of men, the merchants of Syria. No plea of poverty induced him to spare either wa …
jerome · c. 396 · score 0.02
How was it that the soothsayer Balaam, in prophesying the mysteries of Christ [Numbers 24:15-19], spoke more plainly of Him than almost any other prophet? I answered as best I could. Then, unrolling the scroll further, she reached the list of all the halting-places by which the people traveled from Egypt to the waters …
jerome · c. 390 · score 0.02
Count the disasters of our generation: Adrianople, where an emperor and his army were swallowed by the earth [the Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD, where Emperor Valens was killed by the Visigoths]. The walls of Rome themselves are no longer a guarantee of safety. What the world outside those walls looks like, I do not n …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.02
Families that had been wealthy for generations found themselves refugees overnight. Noble women who had never walked anywhere except in a litter ended up walking across Campania with nothing. Among them were women whose entire sense of identity had been built around their social position, their marriages, their househo …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.02
5. Why do I still delay to relate the sequel? When her wedding day was now close at hand and when a marriage chamber was being got ready for the bride and bridegroom; secretly without any witnesses and with only the night to comfort her, she is said to have nerved herself with such considerations as these: What ails yo …
jerome · c. 412 · score 0.01
Her particular service to the Church — and I say this deliberately, because the Church in Rome does not recognize it and should — was in the Origenist controversy. When Rufinus's translations began circulating at Rome, and when fashionable households started treating Origen's allegorizing speculation as the latest inte …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.01
Who would believe it? That Proba, who of all persons of high rank and birth in the Roman world bears the most illustrious name, whose holy life and universal charity have won for her esteem even among the barbarians, who has made nothing of the regular consulships enjoyed by her three sons, Probinus, Olybrius, and Prob …
jerome · c. 390 · score 0.01
There is a grief that faith allows. What faith forbids is despair. Let me tell you what Nepotian was. He was a soldier first — he served in the emperor's guard. But his heart was never in it. While other young officers spent their pay on women and horses, he gave his to the poor. He left the army, took holy orders, and …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.01
The two elder women wept copiously for joy, they raised the prostrate girl, they embraced her trembling form. In her purpose they recognized their own mind, and congratulated each other that now a virgin was to make a noble house more noble still by her virginity. She had found they said, a way to benefit her family an …
jerome · c. 377 · score 0.01
I cannot pass over the men who haunt the houses of noblewomen, hunting for legacies. Their entire concern is their wardrobe and their perfume. You would think they were suitors, not clergymen. Some make a profession of knowing about medicines and visit sick women with suspicious frequency. Others have given up public p …
jerome · c. 409 · score 0.01
Paulinus of Nola, consul's son and heir to one of the great estates of Gaul, abandoned everything and went to live on almost nothing, devoting the rest of his life to God and to caring for the poor. These are not stories of eccentric ascetics. They are stories of men who understood that when everything is stripped away …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.01
Jerome to Gaudentius — greetings. Writing to a small child is a peculiar business. She cannot read this letter. She will not understand it for years. You have asked me to advise you on raising your daughter in consecrated virginity, and so I am addressing myself simultaneously to the child (who will read these words ev …
jerome · c. 396 · score 0.01
Whatever he suffers, we may suffer too. Let us regard his wounds as our own, and all our callousness toward another's pain will dissolve before pity for ourselves. "Not with a hundred tongues or throat of bronze / could I exhaust the forms of fell disease" — which Fabiola alleviated so wonderfully that many of the heal …
jerome · c. 408 · score 0.01
Jerome to the most blessed Pope Theophilus — greetings. My delay in returning to Your Holiness your text in a Latin version is entirely explained by the cascade of interruptions and calamities I have encountered. The Isaurians have launched a sudden raid; Phoenicia and Galilee have been laid waste; Palestine is gripped …
jerome · c. 375 · score 0.01
Letter 17: To the Presbyter Marcus (378-379 AD) [Addressed to a leader among the monks of the Chalcidian desert. Jerome complains bitterly about the persecution he is suffering for refusing to take sides in the theological dispute then convulsing Syria. He protests his orthodoxy and begs permission to stay through the …
jerome · c. 395 · score 0.01
3. And now that I have mentioned heresy — where can I find a trumpet loud enough to proclaim the eloquence of our dear Lucinius? When the filthy heresy of Basilides raged in Spain like a pestilence ravaging every province between the Pyrenees and the ocean, Lucinius upheld the faith of the Church in all its purity and …
jerome · c. 373 · score 0.01
258, who wrote extensively against schism]. In the meantime, I've sent to you — that is, to Paul the Old Man — a Paul who is even older [his Life of Paul the Hermit, traditionally considered the first Christian hermit, who supposedly lived to be 113]. I've taken great pains to bring my language down to a simpler level. …
jerome · c. 373 · score 0.01
Letter 10: To Paul, an Old Man of Concordia (374 AD) [Jerome writes to Paul of Concordia, a remarkable centenarian who owned a good theological library, asking to borrow some commentaries. In return, he sends his newly written Life of Paul the Hermit — Jerome's first hagiographical work.] 1. The shortness of human life …
jerome · c. 411 · score 0.01
I should also say something about the world outside your window, since I assume you have been watching the news. The Goths have sacked Rome. The empire is coming apart at the seams. A man named Alaric, leading an army of people we used to treat as barbarians fit only for the frontier, has walked through the gates of th …
jerome · c. 375 · score 0.01
"You are the light of the world" [Matthew 5:14]; "you are the salt of the earth" [Matthew 5:13]; you are vessels of gold and silver. Here we have only vessels of wood and clay [2 Timothy 2:20], waiting for the rod of iron [Revelation 2:27] and eternal fire. 2. Your greatness terrifies me, but your kindness draws me in. …
jerome · c. 387 · score 0.01
Paulinus, Our brother Ambrose, along with your generous gifts, has delivered to me a most delightful letter — one which, though it comes at the beginning of our friendship, carries the assurance of tested loyalty and long acquaintance. A true friendship cemented by Christ himself does not depend on material gifts, phys …
jerome · c. 396 · score 0.01
Letter 77: To Oceanus (399 AD, Bethlehem) [Jerome writes a magnificent eulogy of Fabiola, one of the most remarkable women of late Roman Christianity. The letter recounts her divorce and controversial remarriage, her dramatic public penance, her founding of the first hospital in Rome, her visit to Bethlehem, her flight …
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.01
If you are not perfect, you have deceived the Lord. The Gospel thunders its warning: "You cannot serve two masters" [Luke 16:13]. Does anyone dare make Christ a liar by trying to serve both God and Mammon? He says it again and again: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me …
jerome · c. 385 · score 0.01
Letter 45: To Asella (385 AD) [Written on board ship at Ostia, as Jerome was leaving Rome for good in August 385. This is one of the most emotionally charged of Jerome's letters — a furious, wounded defense against the calumnies that had driven him from the city. His enemies had attacked his intimacy with Paula and Eus …