Chapter 1
Book I, chapters I through V, of Against Genovianius by Saint Jerome. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Very few days have elapsed since the Holy Brethren of Rome sent to me the treatises of a certain Jovinian, with the request that I would reply to the follies contained in
them. It would crush with evangelical and apostolic vigor the epicurias of Christianity. I read them, but could not in the least comprehend them. I began, therefore, to give them closer attention, and to thoroughly sift not only words and sentences but almost every single syllable, for I wished first to ascertain his meaning,
and then to approve or refute what he had said. But the style is so barbarous and the language so vile and such a heap of blunders that I could neither understand what he was talking about nor by what arguments he was trying to prove his points. At one moment he is all bombast, at another he grovels.
From time to time he lifts himself up, and then, like a wounded snake, finds his own effort too much for him. Not satisfied with the language of men, he attempts something loftier. The mountain's labor, a poor mouse is born, that he's gone mad, even mad, Orestes swears. Moreover, he involves everything in such an inextricable confusion that the saying of
Plautus might be applied to him. This is what none but a syllable will ever read. To understand him we must be prophets. We must read Apollo's raving prophetesses. We remember, too, what Virgil says of senseless noise.
Heraclitus also, surname the Obscure, the philosophers find hard to understand, even with their utmost toil. But what are they compared with our riddle-maker, whose books are much more difficult to comprehend than to refute? Although we must confess the task of refuting them is no easy one.
For how can you overcome a man when you are quite in the dark as to his meaning? But not to be tedious to my reader, the introduction to his second book, of which he has discharged himself, like a sod after a night's debauch, will show the character of his eloquence, and through what bright flowers of rhetoric he takes his stately course. I respond to your invitation, not that I may go through life with a high reputation, but
may live free from idle rumor. I beseech the ground, the young shoots of our plantations, the plants and trees of tenderness, snatched from the whirlpool of vice, to grant me audience and the support of many listeners. We know that the Church, through hope, faith, charity, is inaccessible and impregnable. In it no one is immature.
All are apt to learn. None can force a way into it by violence or deceive it by craft. What I ask is the meaning of these pretentious words, and of this grotesque description. Would you not think he was in a feverish dream, or that he was seized with madness and ought to be put into the straitjacket which Hippocrates described?
However often I read him, even till my heart sinks within me, I am still in uncertainty of his meaning. Everything starts from, everything depends on, something else. It is impossible to make out any connection, and accepting the proofs from scripture, which he has not dared to exchange for his own lovely flowers of rhetoric, his words suit all manner
equally well, because they suit no matter at all. This circumstance led me shrewdly to suspect that his object in proclaiming the excellence of marriage was only to disparage virginity. The one the less is put upon a level with the greater, the lower profits by comparison, but the higher suffers wrong.
For ourselves we do not follow the views of Marcian and Manichaeus, and disparage marriage, nor deceive by the area of Chachion, the leader of the Ancrotites, do we think all intercourse and pure. He condemns and rejects not only marriage, but also food which God created for the use of man.
We know that in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware, and that upon the foundation, Christ, which Paul the master builder laid, some build gold, silver, precious stones, others on the contrary, hay, wood, straw. We are not ignorant of the words, marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled.
But we have read God's first command, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. But while we honor marriage we prefer virginity which is the offspring of marriage. Will silver cease to be silver if gold is more precious than silver? Or is despite done to tree and corn, if we prefer the fruit to root and foliage, or the grain to stalk and ear?
Virginity is to marriage what fruit is to the tree, or grain to the straw. Although the hundredfold, the sixtyfold, and the thirtyfold spring from one earth and from one sowing, yet there is a great difference in respect of number. The thirtyfold has referenced to marriage. The very way the fingers are combined, see how they seem to embrace, tenderly kiss, and
pledge their troth either to other, is a picture of husband and wife. The sixtyfold applies to widows because they are placed in a position of difficulty and distress. Hence the upper finger signifies their depression. And the greater the difficulty in resisting the allurements of pleasure once experienced,
the greater the reward. Moreover, give good heed, my reader, to denote a hundred. The right hand is used instead of the left. A circle is made with the same fingers which on the left hand represent widowhood, and thus the crown of virginity is expressed.
In saying this I have followed my own impatient spirit rather than the course of the argument, for I had scarcely left harbor and had barely hoisted sail when a swelling tide of words suddenly swept me into the depths of the discussion. I must stay my course and take in canvas for a little while, nor will I indulge my sword, anxious as it is to strike a blow for virginity.
The farther back the catapult is drawn, the greater the force of the missile. To linger is not to lose, if by lingering victory is better assured. I will briefly set forth our adversary's views, and I will drag them out from his books, like snakes from the holes where they hide, and will separate the venomous head from the writhing body.
What is baneful shall be discovered, that when we have the power it may be crushed. He says that virgins, widows, and married women, who have been once passed through the laver of Christ, if they are on par in other respects, are of equal merit. He endeavors to show that they who, with full assurance of faith, have been born again in baptism, cannot be overthrown by the devil.
The third point is that there is no difference between abstinence from food and its reception with Thanksgiving. The fourth and last is that there is one reward in the Kingdom of Heaven for all who have kept their baptismal vow. This is the hissing of the old serpent.
By counsels such as this the dragon drove man from paradise, for he promised that if they would prefer fullness to fasting they should be immortal, as though it were an impossibility for them to fall. And while he promises that they shall be gods, he drives them from paradise, with the result that they who, all naked and unhampered, and as virgins unspotted, enjoy the fellowship
of the Lord, were cast down into the veil of tears, and sewed skins together to close themselves withal. But not to detain the reader any longer, I will keep to the division given above, that taking his propositions one by one will rely chiefly on the evidence of scripture to refute them, for fear he may chatter and complain that he was overcome by rhetorical skill rather
than by force of truth. If I succeed in this, and with the aid of a cloud of witnesses from both testaments prove too strong for him, I will then accept his challenge, and adduce illustrations from secular literature. I will show that even among philosophers and distinguished statesmen the virtuous are wont
to be preferred by all to the voluptuous, that is to say, men like Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristides, to Aristippus, Epicurus, and Alcibiades. I entreat virgins of both sexes, and all such as our continent, the married also, and the twice married, to assist my efforts with their prayers. Jovian is the common enemy, for he who maintains all to be of equal merit does no less injury
to virginity in comparing it with marriage than he does to marriage, when he allows it to be lawful, but to the same extent as second and third marriage is. But to diamists and trigamists also he does wrong, for he places on level with them whoremongers and the most licentious persons as soon as they have repented. Perhaps those who have been married twice or thrice ought not to complain, for the same
whoremonger, if penitent, is made equal in the kingdom of heaven even to virgins. I will therefore explain more clearly, and in proper sequence the arguments he employs and the illustrations he adduces respecting marriage, and will treat them in the order in which he states them. And I beg the reader not to be disturbed if he is compelled to read Jovian's nauseating
trash. He will all the more gladly drink Christ's antidote after the devil's poisonous concoction. Listen with patience, ye virgins. Listen I pray you, to the voice of the most voluptuous of preachers. Nay, rather close your ears, as you would to the sirens' fabled songs, and pass on.
For a little while you endure the wrongs you suffer. Think you are crucified with Christ and are listening to the blasphemies of the Pharisees. First of all, he says, God declares that therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And lest we should say that this is a quotation from the Old Testament, he asserts that it
has been confirmed by the Lord in the Gospel. What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. And he immediately adds, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. He next repeats the names of Seth, Enos, Canaan, Mahalel, Jared, Enoch, Masuzla, Limech, Noah, and tells us that they all had wives, and in accordance with the will of God, begat sons,
as though there could be any table of descent, or any history of mankind without wives and children. There says he, is Enoch, who walked with God and was carried up to heaven. There is Noah, the only person who, except his wife, and his sons and their wives, was saved at the deluge, although there must have been many persons not of marriageable age, and therefore presumably virgins.
Again, after the deluge, when the human race started as it were anew, men and women were paired together, and a fresh blessing was pronounced on procreation. Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. Moreover, free permission was given to eat flesh. Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you.
As the green herb have I given you all. He then flies off to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of whom the first had three wives, the second one, the third four, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilphah, and he declares that Abraham by his faith merited the blessings which he had received in begetting his son. Sarah typifying the church, when it had ceased to be with her after the manner of women,
for the blessing of childbearing. We are informed that Rebecca went like a prophet to inquire of the Lord. It was told, Two nations and two peoples are in thy womb, that Jacob served for his wife, and that when Rachel, thinking it was in the power of her husband to give her children, said, Give me children, or else I die, he replied, I am in God's stead.
Who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? So well aware was he that the fruit of marriage cometh from the Lord, and not from the husband. We next learn that Joseph, a holy man of spotless chastity, and all the blessed patriarchs, had wives, and that God blessed them all alike through the lips of Moses. Judah also and Thamar are brought upon the scene, and he censures Onan, slain by the
Lord, because he, grudging to raise up seed to his brother, marred the marriage rite. He refers to Moses and the leprosy of Miriam, who, because she chided her brother on account of his wife, was stricken by the avenging hand of God. He praises Samson, and may even say, extravagantly, panegorizes the exorius Nazarite. Deborah also and Barak are mentioned, because although they had not the benefit of virginity,
they are victorious over the iron chariots of Sisera and Jabin. He brings forward Jeel, the wife of Herber, the Kenite, and extols her for arming herself with the stake. He says that there was no difference between Jevthe and his virgin daughter, who was sacrificed to the Lord.
Nay, of the two he prefers the faith of the father to that of the daughter, who met death with grief and tears. He then comes to Samuel, another Nazarite of the Lord, who from intimacy was brought up in the tabernacle, and was glad in a linen ephod. Or, as the words are rendered, in linen vestments.
He too, we are told, begat sons without a stain upon his priestly purity. He places Boaz and his wife Ruth side by side in his repository, and traces the descent of Jesse and David from them. He then points out how David himself, for the price of two hundred foreskins and at the pearl of his life, was bedded with the king's daughter.
What shall I say of Solomon, whom he includes in his list of husbands that represents as a type of the Savior, containing that of him it is written, Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king's son. And to him shall be given the gold of Sheba, and men shall pray for him continually. Then all at once he makes a jump to Elijah and Elisha, and tells us a great secret, that
the spirit of Elijah rested on Elisha. Why he mentioned this he does not say. It can hardly be that he thinks Elijah and Elisha like the rest were married men. The next step is to Hezekiah, upon whose praises he dwells, and yet, I wonder why, forgets to mention that he said, Henceforth I will beget children.
He relates that Josiah, a righteous man, in whose time the book of Deuteronomy was found in the temple, was instructed by Huldah, wife of Shalom. Daniel also, and the three Euse, are classed by him with the married. Suddenly he betakes himself to the gospel, and adduces Zechariah and Elizabeth, Peter and his father-in-law, and the rest of the apostles.
His inference is thus expressed. If they idly urge, in defense of themselves, the plea that the world, in its early stage, Let them listen to the words of Paul. I desire therefore that the younger widows marry, bear children, and marriage is honorable, and the bed undefiled, and the wife is bound so long time as her husband liveth.
But if the husband be dead, she is free to be married to whom she will, only in the Lord. And Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression. But she shall be saved through the childbearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety. Surely we shall hear no more of the famous apostolic utterance, and they who have wives
as though they had not. It can hardly be that you will say the reason why he wished them to be married was that some widows had already turned back after Satan, as though virgins never fell and their fall was not more ruinous. All this makes it clear that, in forbidding to marry and to eat food which God created
for use, you have consciousnesses seared as with the hot iron, and are followers of the Manichaeans. Then comes much more which would be unprofitable to discuss. At last he dashes into rhetoric and apostrophizes virginity thus, I do you no wrong virgin, you have chosen a life of chastity on account of the present
distress. You determined on the course in order to be holy in body and spirits. Be not proud. You and your married sisters are members of the same church. End of Book I, Chapters I through V
