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‘Alii discunt–pro pudor!–a feminis’: Jerome, Epist. 53.7.1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Neil Adkin
Neil Adkin
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska at Lincoln
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Extract

In the letter which initiated his correspondence with Paulinus of Nola Jerome deplores the propensity of the inexpert to pontificate on scripture. Three kinds of incompetence are denounced. The second takes the following form: ‘alii discunt – pro pudor!–a feminis, quod viros doceant’ (Epist. 53.7.1). As in the other two denunciations, Jerome has chosen to express himself in general terms; scholars have nonetheless assumed that here a specific individual is meant. Nautin argued that with these words Jerome was attacking Rufinus, who is here represented as being intellectually dependent on his patroness Melania. More recently Testard has maintained that Jerome's criticism is in fact directed against Ambrose. However Nautin's view that Rufinus is the target has now been re-affirmed by Rebenich. The purpose of the present note is to draw attention to a piece of evidence which has hitherto been overlooked; it would seem to indicate that the object of Jerome's attack cannot be Rufinus.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , December 1994 , pp. 559 - 561
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1994

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References

1 Nautin, P., ‘Études de chronologie hiéronymienne (393–7)’, REAug 19 (1973), 222–3.Google Scholar

2 Testard, M., ‘Jérôme et Ambroise: Sur un “aveu” du De officiis de l'évêque de Milan’, in Duval, Y.-M. (ed.), Jérôme entre l'Occident et l'Orient (Paris, 1988), pp. 245–6Google Scholar. Testard's case has evidently been accepted by Duval, Y.-M., ‘Les premiers rapports de Paulin de Nole avec Jérôme: Moine et philosophe? Poète ou exégète?’, in Polyanthema: Studi di letteratura cristiana antica offerti a Salvatore Costanza (Stud. Tardoant. 7; Messina, 1989), p. 195Google Scholar. Testard argues that Jerome's first two denunciations of incompetence are aimed at Ambrose; for evidence that the third is also an attack on him cf. the present writer, ‘“Taceo de meis similibus” (Jerome, Epist. 53.7)’, VetChr 29 (1992), 261–8Google Scholar. Testard did not attempt a rebuttal of Nautin's thesis; he merely set out his own as an alternative.

3 Rebenich, S., Hieronymus und sein Kreis (Stuttgart, 1992), pp. 230–1Google Scholar. Nautin's interpretation had also been accepted by Kelly, J. N. D., Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London, 1975), p. 192Google Scholar. Most recently Lardet, P., L'apologie de Jérôme contre Rufin: Un commentaire (Leiden, 1993), p. 288CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has simply recorded both views and observed that ‘une cible n'exclut pas forcement l'autre’.

4 Nautin (op. cit. n. 1), 223, n. 51, remarks that ‘la même expression’ occurs in the Liber de optimo genere interpretandi (Epist. 57), where Jerome defends his translation of Epiphanius’ famous letter to John of Jerusalem: ‘ac ne forsitan accusator meus facilitate, qua cuncta loquitur…’ (Epist. 57.1.2). Nautin accordingly argues that here too the reference must be to Rufinus; his reasoning is accepted by Bartelink, G. J. M., Hieronymus, Liber de optimo genere interpretandi (Epistula 57): Ein Kommentar (Leiden, 1980), p. 27Google Scholar (cf. Lardet [op. cit. n. 3], p. 55). Nautin's deduction is however inadmissible: the sense of facilitas in the two passages is quite different. Whereas Jerome employs the term in letter 53 to signify ‘facultas rei facile…perficiendae, mobilitas, agilitas’ (so TLL 6.1 col. 73.26–80; the passage from Jerome's letter is adduced at 66–7), the meaning in letter 57 is ‘cum nota vituperationis, fere i. q. neglegentia, credulitas, levitas (cf. Gloss, licentia)’ (so TLL 6.1 coll. 73.81–74.56; for letter 57 cf. col. 74.27–8).

5 The ensuing description of Rufinus as ‘censorem…Romanae facundiae’ is to be seen in the light of the phrase which introduces the anecdote: ‘muti de eloquentibus iudicantes’.

6 Allusions to his ‘eloquence’ are of course sarcastic; cf. Lardet (op. cit. n. 3), p. 55.

7 For the reference to Rufinus cf. Cavallera, F., Saint Jérôme: Sa vie et son oeuvre (Louvain-Paris, 1922) i.2 131.Google Scholar

8 Here ‘testudineo gradu’ clearly denotes Rufinus' halting style.

9 Lardet (op. cit. n. 3), p. 100, points in this connection to Rufinus' statements at Apol. adv. Hier. 1.11 (‘dicebam me…ad latinum sermonem tricennali iam pene incuria torpuisse’) and Hist, praef. (‘qui in tam multis annis usum latini sermonis amiserim’). However Lardet himself acknowledges that such avowals simply belong to the ‘modesty topos’; they occur repeatedly in Jerome's own oeuvre (cf. Janson, T., Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions [Stockholm, 1964], pp. 137–8)Google Scholar. Jerome's criticism must accordingly have a wider reference.

10 On ‘inextricabilibus nodis’ Lardet (op. cit. n. 3), p. 178, observes: ‘cliché de critique littéraire’. However the parallels he adduces deal rather with argumentative involution than with halting and inarticulate style.

11 For documentation cf. Cavallera (op. cit. n. 7) i.2 131–5.

12 Cf. Antin, P., ‘Jérôme, Ep. 125.18.2–3’, RBen 69 (1959), 344Google Scholar (à propos Grunnius): ‘s’ il a une élocution défectueuse, c'est sans doute parce que le cochon a la gorge délicate: “guttur homini tantum et suibus intumescit” (Pline, N.H. 11.68.1), et chez Elien, H. anim. 3.35, il est question de pore aphone en Macédoine’.

13 Cf. Janson (op. cit. n. 9), pp. 124–41 (for additions cf. the present writer, RFIC 112 [1984], 288, n. 3).

14 Βραδγλωσσος occurs at Gerontius, V. Mel. iun. praef. and Ps. Epiphanius, Hom. 5 p. 488^; however, this is clearly an echo of Exod. 4.10.

15 Duval, Y.-M., ‘Pélage est-il le censeur inconnu de 1'Adversus Iovinianum à Rome en 393? Ou: Du “portrait-robot” de l'hérétique chez S.Jérôme’, RHE 75 (1980), 532–3Google Scholar. In his discussion of Jerome's attack on Rufinus' inarticulateness Antin (op. cit. n. 12), pp. 343–4, adduces only one parallel that does not concern Rufinus himself: it refers to a centaur (V. Paul. 7).

16 For the reference to Ambrose cf. the present writer, ‘Ambrose and Jerome: The opening shot’, Mnemosyne n. s. 46 (1993), 369–73.Google Scholar

17 For the Ambrosian reference cf. the present writer (op. cit. n. 2).

18 For Ambrose as target cf. Dunphy, W., ‘On the date of St Ambrose's De Tobia’, SEJG 27 (1984), 29–33.Google Scholar

19 Rebenich (op. cit. n. 3), p. 230, n. 167.

20 For Jerome's repeated attacks on Ambrose's exegetical shortcomings cf. Paredi, A., ‘S. Gerolamo e S. Ambrogio’, in Mélanges Eugène Tisserant (Stud. Test. 235; Vatican City, 1964) v. 2 183–98 passim.Google Scholar