Rereading the Jovinianist Controversy: Asceticism and Clerical Authority in Late Ancient Christianity

Sometime early in the 390s Siricius, bishop of Rome, penned an anxious letter to his fellow Italian bishops. Reporting the results of a synod recently held at Rome, Siricius alerted his episcopal confreres that Jovinian and eight followers had been condemned as "the authors of a new heresy and blasphemy." ¹ Siricius did not describe any of Jovinian's teachings in detail, although he noted Jovinian's view that married Christian women and consecrated virgins were equally deserving of honor (Ep. 7.5). Perhaps the most troubling feature of Jovinian's activity, from Siricius's point of view, was its impact on other Christians. Although the malice of heretics had afflicted the Church ever since the time of the apostles, Siricius claimed, never before had they been so successful at undermining the Church from within: "Wounding Catholics, perverting the continence of the Old and New Testaments, interpreting it in a diabolical sense, by their seductive and deceitful speech they have begun to destroy no small number of Christians and to make them allies of their own insanity" (Ep. 7.4).

Several features of this letter are noteworthy. Siricius's letter marked the first time in the history of Christianity that the superiority of celibacy over marriage was officially defined as doctrine, and, conversely, that its denial was labeled as "heresy." Certainly, many Christians, both in and out of the mainstream of the tradition, had long believed that celibacy was a higher or better way of life. Such a view seemed to many to be a reasonable interpretation of the apostle Paul's opinion that "he who marries his virgin does well, and he who refrains from marriage does better." ² But despite this deeply rooted preference for celibacy in some quarters, such a view had never been regarded as the only Christian one. ³ Siricius's letter, therefore, marked a distinctive hardening of boundaries in the later fourth century, the moment at which a previously implicit Christian consensus about marriage and celibacy reached a consequential degree of explicitness.

And yet, it also is clear from Siricius's letter that Jovinian's teaching was regarded as dangerous precisely because so many Christians found it persuasive. In other words, Jovinian's success was a sign of the very fragility of the consensus that Siricius wished to define. Several other sources confirm this. Jerome, for example, expressed dismay that "clerics, monks, and others who lead celibate lives" had accepted Jovinian's view that marriage and celibacy were equally meritorious. "They cut themselves off from their wives in order to imitate the chastity of virgins," Jerome complained, "and yet they wish married people [to be considered] the same as virgins." ⁴ Augustine, likewise, observed that Jovinian's preaching had had the effect of leading many consecrated men and women at Rome to abandon the celibate life and to marry. ⁵ Jovinian's very popularity indicates that the consensus articulated by Siricius was not a consensus of the whole Church.

This contrast between Siricius's effort to define Jovinian's views as a "new heresy" and Jovinian's evident success among Christians at Rome suggests the central theme of this essay. Since the late nineteenth century, only two major studies of the Jovinianist controversy have appeared, and both of these have been devoted to a consideration of Jovinian's theology. ⁶ Little attention has been paid to the responses of Jovinian's opponents and to their role in defining Jovinian as "heretic." Three Western churchmen—Siricius, Ambrose, and Jerome—engaged directly with Jovinian's views, but each one approached him from a different perspective. Each had different reasons for opposing Jovinian's teaching, and, to some extent, they seem to have been as hostile to each other as they were to Jovinian.

My aim here is to "reread" the controversy surrounding Jovinian...