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. 391 · score 0.02
Letter 64: To Fabiola, On the Vestments of the High Priest (396-397 AD) [Fabiola, one of Jerome's most devoted followers among the Roman aristocracy, had visited Bethlehem but was forced to cut her stay short by a threatened invasion of the Huns, which drove Jerome and his community to take temporary refuge on the Pale …
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. 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. 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. 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. 372 · score 0.01
Here where I am, I'm ignorant not just of what's happening in my homeland but of whether it still exists. Even if some venomous critic tears at me with his poisonous fangs, I won't fear the judgment of men when I have God as my judge. As someone once said: "Shatter the world to pieces if you will -- it falls upon a hea …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.01
I think, therefore, that I ought to warn you, in all kindness and affection, to hold fast the faith of the saintly Innocent, the spiritual son of Anastasius and his successor in the apostolic see; and not to receive any foreign doctrine, however wise and discerning you may take yourself to be. Men of this type whisper …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.01
That we should believe this to be true of men is nothing wonderful, for even the Lord Himself was tempted, and of Abraham the scripture bears witness that God tempted him. Genesis 22:1 It is for this reason also that the apostle says: we glory in tribulations....knowing that tribulation works patience; and patience exp …
jerome · c. 396 · score 0.01
Travelers hurried from Rome to take advantage of the mild coast before setting sail. What Publius once did on Malta for a single apostle and a single ship's crew [Acts 28:7], Fabiola and Pammachius did again and again for vast numbers — not only supplying the needs of the destitute but providing additional means for th …
jerome · c. 396 · score 0.01
Among the kings, do we read of any so wicked as Ahab? Yet when Ahab heard Elijah's denunciation, "he tore his clothes, put sackcloth on his flesh, and fasted... and went about dejectedly" [1 Kings 21:27]. And the word of God came to Elijah: "Do you see how Ahab humbles himself before me? Because he humbles himself befo …
jerome · c. 392 · score 0.01
Castrutius, My son, the deacon Heraclius, tells me that in your eagerness to see me you traveled all the way to Cissa, and that — though a Pannonian, and therefore a creature of solid land — you did not flinch at the surges of the Adriatic and the dangers of the Aegean and Ionian seas. He tells me you would have comple …
jerome · c. 393 · score 0.01
Lucinius, Your unexpected letter roused me from my torpor with glad tidings. I hasten to embrace with the arms of affection a man my eyes have never seen, silently saying to myself: "Oh that I had wings like a dove! For then would I fly away and be at rest" [Psalm 55:6]. In you the Lord's words are fulfilled: "Many sha …
jerome · c. 385 · score 0.01
Marcella, Love knows no measure, impatience no bounds, eagerness no delay. That is why we — students presuming to instruct our teacher — write to you now. We are like the proverbial pig trying to lecture the goddess of invention. You were the one who lit our fire. You were the one who urged us, by teaching and example, …
jerome · c. 396 · score 0.01
Changing one's disposition is a greater feat than changing one's wardrobe. It is harder for us to part with arrogance than with gold and gems — for even when we cast these aside, we sometimes preen ourselves on an austerity that is really just ostentation, bidding for popular applause with a poverty that is itself for …
jerome · c. 396 · score 0.01
Those men had conquered physical force; she had mastered "spiritual wickedness" [Ephesians 6:12]. I seem to hear even now the vanguard leading the procession, and the thunder of the multitude that thronged in thousands to her funeral. Streets, porticoes, and rooftops could not contain the spectators. On that day Rome s …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.01
Rather slay the allurements to vice while they are still only thoughts; and dash the little ones of the daughter of Babylon against the stones where the serpent can leave no trail. Be wary and vow a vow unto the Lord: let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great tra …