Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian: Second Edition

III. JEROME ON THE PRIESTHOOD AND EPISCOPATE

III JEROME ON THE PRIESTHOOD AND EPISCOPATE By the time Alaric had sacked Rome in 410, Martin of Tours was more than ten years dead, and Sulpicius Severus had completed both Ltfe and Dialogues. As far as chronology is concerned, it is time for us to take another 'sideways step', and turn to Gaul. But first we must go back, and examine, in the light of his career to date, Jerome's attitudes on the two basic themes of our inquiry-authority and literature. For an understanding of jerome's life and conviction does not depend on plotting the rise and fall of his fortunes in Rome, nor indeed on the rise and fall of the fortunes of Rome itself. His willingness to identify himself with the public affairs of the church points to another influential interest, (indeed, to a sense of duty,) which was to persist throughout his life. His conception of the link between monk and church emerges very clearly in letters and documents written during the years just before and during the Origenist controversy (often, in other words, discussed in the context of wide, or at least different, issues). In his commentary on Paul's epistle to Titus, for example, written between 387 and 389, Jerome the priest affected the air of noblesse oblige. He declared that the clergy had a duty to be better than any­ one else, and arranged them in a neat hierarchy of ascending excellence; and he couched this exhortation to virtue in terms that recall more ascetic concerns: 'What can we hope for from the formation of a disciple who thinks himself greater than his master? Therefore bishops, priests, and deacons need to take special care that they outstrip, in their speech and behaviour, all those over whom they are set'.' This certainly betrayed, with a vengeance, 'the cautious esprit de corps of the Latin clergyman , .2 More important, 1 Comm. in Ep. ad Titum, ii. 15. 2 Brown, 'Patrons of Pelagius', 71; repro Religion and Society, 225. 126 JEROME perhaps, it echoed the harsher strictures of his earlier letter to Heliodorus: leave family and homeland, where your true worth is so little appreciated; and yet remember, therefore, that nothing short of perfection is good enough.3 But, by the 390s, Jerome knew better how to combine both points of view, and how to fit the ascetic into an ecclesiastical hier­ archy. In his letter to Nepotianus, written in 394, he agreed that monks could become members of the clergy (which was what his correspondent wanted to do) without sacrificing personal standards. The statement involved (as he himself admitted) a specific retractation of what he had said to Heliodorus.4 It was not necessary to suppose that men would be either monks or clergy: Jerome's distinction now was be­ tween clergy who were monks and clergy who were not. To become a priest might mean, for some, a new and exciting (not to say tempting) cursus honorum-a life of opportunity and fame, made respectable by the legislation of a Christian empire-; but the man of better motive would acknowledge ascetic precepts that applied to anyone with a sense of reli­ gious vocation, whether he intended to become a cleric or not.s It is interesting that Jerome felt able to give Nepotianus the specifically clerical advice, leaving his guidance in the principles of monasticism (by word and example) in the hands of his bishop (no less a person than Heliodorus him­ self!).6 Not surprisingly, his portrayal of the ideal episcopal household not only pointed back to his own experience under Valerian in Aquileia, but also forward to the concep­ tion of office propagated by, and recognized in, Proculus of Marseille: the bishop must be the father of his clergy; and they in turn must obey him with filial devotion.7 There was another retractation involved in this letter (and in other writings of the period)-not so explicit; but contrast­ ing, again, with that letter to Heliodorus. Jerome had ended then, in 376, with a portrait of the exiled ascetic, (as he hoped his friend would be,) laughing on the last day, 'rusticanus et 3 Ep. xiv. 2, 7; see above, pp. 102 ff. 4 Ep.Iii.!. 5 Ep.Iii. I, 5 f. • Ibid. 4. 7 Ibid.7; see below, p. 175. JEROME ON THE PRIESTHOOD AND EPISCOPATE 127 pauper', while the figures of ancient wisdom stood...