Reading Jerome in the Renaissance: Erasmus' reception of the Adversus Jovinianum *.

INTRODUCTION

Vital to the recovery and transmission of the culture of the ancient world undertaken by the Renaissance humanists was their enthusiasm for the writings of the Church Fathers. As with classical texts, humanists undertook to discover and disseminate patristic works. Their principal contribution was to make available in the West, both in the original language and in Latin translations, the writings of the Greek Church Fathers.' Humanists were interested in the Fathers for several reasons. The Fathers presented a powerful alternative to the scholastic method in the practice of theology. Their proximity to the scriptural fontes of Christianity and the strong grammatical element in their rhetorical approach to exegesis distinguished them from the medieval schoolmen with their penchant for dialectic, and made them attractive to the humanists. Humanist scholars, whether associated with the Roman curia or active in reformed religious orders, appropriated the Fathers as formidable allies in devising a rhetorical theol ogy whose object was not so much the definition of dogma as an exhortation to personal moral and spiritual reform. Perhaps most significantly, the Fathers, as products of the ancient world, functioned as impressive mediators between the two cultures that informed humanism: pagan antiquity and Christianity. Humanists could, and did, enlist them to justify the study of secular literature, i.e. the poets, philosophers, and natural scientists of ancient Greece and Rome; to demonstrate the reconcilability of pagan wisdom with Christianity; and to assert a religious style and theological culture in which erudition and piety were inseparable. As Eugene Rice observed, humanists admired the writings of the Fathers primarily because

they found in their works -- or thought they did -- a normative style of piety and religious sensibility, one distilled in the Petrarchan phrase docta pietas (learned piety), and in the formula used by many humanists to describe their religious program: the union of wisdom and piety with eloquence. (2)

A quarter-century ago, writing of Erasmus of Rotterdam, the most outstanding of Renaissance editors of patrisric texts, Rice lamented: "It is astonishing how little attention has been given to the patristic scholarship that was the core of his intellectual life." (3) He might have said the same of humanists in general. Until recently, the leading contributions to the field remained Charles Stinger's study of Ambrogio Traversari and Rice's acclaimed Saint Jerome in the Renaissance. (4) Since 1990, however, scholarly interest in the reception of the Church Fathers in the Renaissance and Reformation has grown, and Irena Backus, in particular, has done much to contribute to this important subject of research. (5) In Erasmus studies, the situation has changed considerably over the past generation. We can turn to two monographs that explore patristic influence on Erasmus -- that of Augustine and of Origen (6) -- as well as to several articles that examine the humanist's relation to the Fathers in general or to a pa rticular Father. (7)

Nevertheless, more work needs to be done, even on Erasmus' reception of Jerome, his favorite among the Latin Fathers. We still await a comprehensive, book-length treatment of this subject. This book will be able to build on several studies that have outlined the essential features of Erasmus' edition of Jerome's letters and have evaluated the contribution he made to history and biography with his Vita of Jerome both from the perspective of Historiography and of the medieval and Renaissance cult of Jerome. (8) While scholars readily acknowledge Erasmus' powers of historical criticism in the Vita, they are also well aware that the Jerome of the humanist biography conspicuously melds with the ideals of humanist scholarship espoused by the biographer: Jerome emerges in the Vita as Erasmus' alter ego.

The relationship between biographer and subject has been interpreted in various ways. John Olin argues that a "close bond" inhered in "the very heart of Erasmus' reform humanism: his aim to revitalize theological study." In the enterprise of restoring the theology of the early Church, Olin claims "Jerome led the way and represented the goal." To restore Jerome "was synonymous with the restoration of theology itself." Jerome served as "the model and ideal" of a rhetorical theology (9) Lisa Jardine, distancing herself from what she calls "the pietistic history of Erasmus and Erasmian humanism," (10) proposes a line of interpretation very different from that of Olin and from Rice's view that the self-portrait inscribed into the biography of Jerome is of "a Christian scholar attractively but disconcertingly Erasmian in attitude and personality." (11) Jardine contends that Erasmus constructed his own scholarly identity upon a reconfigured version of Jerome in order to create for himself the authority of the consum mate scholar in a world of learning that was supposedly predominantly secular. His aim, according to Jardine, was not the restoration of theology, but "the fusion, or perhaps confusion, of secular and sacred attention." (12) Mark Vessey disagrees with Jardine. He argues that the Jerome that Erasmus appropriated was the Christian editor and author par excellence. Erasmus' publishing strategies were essentially those of Christian writers of late antiquity, especially of Jerome. In Vessey's opinion, the humanist was an heir to the modes of Christian authorship developed by this Father and re-established Christian authorship both by editing the works of ancient Christian writers and by endeavoring to write as a Christian author himself. (13)

Up to now, scholarship on Jerome's place in the Renaissance has focused on the Church Father as icon and exemplar, and rightly so. The saint enjoyed an impressive iconographical career during the Renaissance. The depiction of the penitent ascetic in the desert, the dominant image of Jerome in the second half of the Quattrocento, mirrored currents in spirituality that emphasized austerity, penance, poverty; and strict adherence to a monastic rule, as evidenced in the Hieronymite congregations in Italy and Spain. (14) Humanists enlisted him as an ally in the promotion of the studia humanitatis: Jerome, as scholar and man of letters, provided inspiration for them. In his sermons on Jerome, Pierpaolo Vergerio (1370-1444) held up the Church Father as an exemplar of the study of the liberal arts, of a life led according to Christian moral principles, and of religious reform. (15)

To deepen our understanding of the reception of Jerome in the Renaissance in general and by Erasmus in particular, we need to shift our attention to Jerome as author. In the early decades of the Quattrocento, still prior to the inception of print culture, Traversari studied Jerome's letters, committing many of these texts to memory, and Poggio Bracciolini set to work on assembling these letters into a book. (16) Leonello d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, inscribed as an interlocutor into Angelo Decembrio's De politia litteraria (1462), favored the practice of adorning a humanist library with an image of Jerome in the act of writing. (17) Indeed, the iconography of the Church Father as the scholar in his study came into vogue in the second half of the fifteenth century; reinforcing the idea of Jerome as author. (18)

In German-speaking lands, during the first two decades of the sixteenth century, Jerome's printed textual authority equaled that of Augustine, who had dominated the publication of patristic sources in the last half of the fifteenth century. Both Fathers were represented by thirty editions. Jerome dominated the second decade of the sixteenth century with twenty-two printings against seventeen for Augustine. (19) Through print Jerome's writings also became accessible in vernacular languages: an Italian translation of his letters appeared in 1497 and a French translation in 1520. (20) If we realize that Jerome was the object not only of iconic illustration and humanist idealization but also of intellectual production and consumption through editing, translating, and reading, we will comprehend more completely his appropriation by Renaissance humanism. Vessey urges that in order to understand what Jerome represented for Erasmus "we must first of all read Jerome." (21) We must also, moreover, read Jerome as Erasmu s did.

Humanists read texts critically. They treated authors, as Stinger reminds us, not so much as authorities but as fontes, "as individual sources of experiences or interpretations whose meaning and significance needed to be historically constructed and critically assessed. The humanists thus became increasingly sensitive to personal, political, intellectual, and cultural contexts in their quest to understand the intention of the author's text." (22)

It is time for scholars to focus on Erasmus' critical evaluation of Jerome's works and to realize the great importance that the humanist attached to encountering the Church Father as an author. In his dedication of the edition of Jerome to William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Erasmus complains that the fervor for the relics of the saints far outstrips the interest in their writings. He also makes no secret of what toil and trouble editing Jerome's letters has caused him: "I believe that the writing of his books cost Jerome less effort than I spent in the restoring of them, and their birth meant fewer nightly vigils for him than their rebirth for me." (23) The title of Erasmus' biographical sketch announces that the Vita was composed principally on the basis of Jerome's writings: ex ipsius potissimum litteris contexta. The Vita concludes with "a stirring, universal appeal" to read Jerome, to whom every person and many nations may lay claim. (24) Erasmus urges: "Let each sex and each age study him, rea d him, drink him in." (25)

The most obvious way to explore Erasmus' restoration and reception of Jerome is to read the humanist's copious scholia on Jerome's writings. These scholia, "an incomparable resource for the scholar and the commentator of Jerome," (26) appear in three of the first four volumes of the nine-volume edition of the Church Father's opera that Erasmus produced in Basel along with Bruno, Basil, and Boniface Amerbach. This, the first undertaking to print Jerome's opera omnia, marked "the beginning of a new epoch in Christian literary production." (27) Johann Froben published the first edition in September 1516 and a revised second edition in 1524-26. Erasmus introduced more changes in his annotations or scholia in the third edition, which was printed by Claude Chevallon in Paris in 1533-34 and reissued with only slight changes by the Froben publishing house in Basel in 1536-37, 1553, and 1565. (28) Erasmus took complete responsibility for the first four volumes, which contained Jerome's letters as well as works falsely attributed to him. Erasmus did not append scholia to the spurious works. Initially, Jerome's polemical writings, which can be read as extended letters, constituted the third volume, but in the second and third editions these works appeared in the second volume, displacing the spuria to the fourth volume.

Of all Jerome's writings, the Adversus Jovinianum, his longest treatise, received the most commentary from Erasmus. How did Erasmus, Jerome's most ardent champion in the Renaissance, react to a work that exalted virginity and seemed to take a dim view of marriage? This question points to a potential intellectual conflict between the humanist and the Church Father. In the Adversus Jovinianum, Erasmus, a great apologist for the dignity of marriage, confronted one of the most strident and best known briefs for the superiority of virginity to marriage in the western Christian tradition. The complexity of Erasmus' concept of marriage matches the complexity of his reading of Jerome's polemic. Rejecting the view of marriage as a "deplorable necessity" to remedy human sexual appetite, Erasmus believed that in marriage physical and spiritual love could be reconciled. (29) Nevertheless, he does not evince an "aversion towards asceticism." (30) Virginity remains a noble ideal that married couples should emulate as much as possible. Erasmus indicates in his treatise on marriage, the Institutio christiani matrimonii (1526), that they should have sexual relations infrequently and primarily for the purpose of procreation. (31) An examination of the scholia that bear directly on the controversy between Jerome and his opponent, Jovinian, reveals that Erasmus seconds the Church Father's attack on Jovinian's rhetoric without decisively coming down on one side of the theological debate between them. Only rarely does Erasmus incline towards Jerome's position on marriage; more frequently he disapproves of the way in which Jerome manipulates Scripture to his advantage.

CONTEXTS: HISTORICAL AND EDITORIAL

In 393, Jerome wrote his most infamous work, the Adversus Jovinianum, a polemical treatise in two books. Outraged by Jovinian's thesis that virgins, wives, and widows were equal in spiritual merit, Jerome, in Book 1, vigorously upheld the superiority of virginity to such an extent that one could suspect him of denigrating marriage. In Book 2, he set our to refute three other opinions held by Jovinian. Following Jerome, Erasmus summarized these as follows: the baptized could not relapse into sin; there was no difference between abstaining from and eating food, as long as those who ate did so with thanksgiving; and those who persevered in their baptism would all enjoy an equal reward in heaven. (32)

Jerome's protestations of respect for marriage did not prove entirely convincing. In Rome, Pammachius, one of his married friends, tried to suppress the publication of Jerome's reply to Jovinian. (33) As Peter Brown observed, "Jerome's Against Jovinian acted as an inspiration and as an irritant through the Latin world." While some ascetic stalwarts applauded Jerome, others took a more respectful view of marriage. Brown notes that the reaction to Jerome's treatise "shows Christian congregations baffled and angered by the fashionable radical stances of one of their more articulate leaders." (34) Augustine's response took the form of a treatise On the Good of Marriage (De bono conjugali), a "rehabilitation of marriage" that served as "his covert work Against Jerome." (35) Since our knowledge of Jovinian is necessarily fragmentary; coming to us only from what his opponents - Jerome, Augustine, and, to a lesser extent, Ambrose -- reveal about him, scholarship on him has been sparse. Early studies divided along con fessional lines: Jovinian was either the first Protestant or a heretic. (36) More recently, he has been situated "in the mainstream of Christian tradition" of his time in relation to his opposition to what, in his view, must have seemed the Manichean elements inherent in Jerome's asceticism and in the emerging belief in Mary's virginity in partu. (37) What has become clear is that Jovinian was the most outspoken opponent of the late fourth-century development of a Christian identity constructed upon the ascetic ideal of the renunciation of sexual activity. (38)

As John Oppel has pointed out, the Adversus Jovinanum exercised great influence on the debate over the merits or demerits of marriage from late antiquity to the early years of the Reformation. Medieval hostility towards marriage and women can be traced back to Jerome's polemic. During the Renaissance, this work served as "an important source for the conduct literature, which sought to educate virgin brides into chaste matrons." (39)

What did Erasmus think of Jerome's well-known text? We must begin by looking at the editorial apparatus that accompanies the text, the same system of commentary that supplements all of Jerome's genuine letters. In the first volume of the 1516 edition, each text is preceded first by an argumentum, a brief summary of the contents of the text that might also provide some contextual information, and then by the scholia. In some instances, an antidotus -- there could also be more than one -- brings the scholia to a close. The antidotus gave Erasmus the opportunity of addressing one of the themes of the text or of relating an aspect of the text to a contemporary problem. The first letter of volume 1 is the only exception to the pattern of argumentum, scholia, (antidotus), text. In this case, the text precedes the editorial apparatus. Volume 3 presents a different order of commentary: argurnentum, text, scholia, (antidotus). This pattern became standard in the subsequent Erasmian editions of Jerome.

An important caveat must inform an investigation of the scholia on the Adversus Jovinianum: the scholia discussed in sections 3 and 4 below exist in an ocean of commentary. Claude Chevallon's printing of the third Erasmian edition of Jerome enumerates 375 scholia on Book 1 of the treatise and 178 on Book 2. (40) The vast majority of these scholia do not directly impinge upon the controversy between Jerome and Jovinian. On the contrary, they reflect the functions of the scholia deftly summarized by Olin: "They explain terms and figures of speech, they identify names and places, they indicate scriptural and literary allusions, they clarify obscurities, they give variants and discuss corrections in the text." (41) To this list we may add that the scholia provided observations -- in Jacques Chomarat's words, "incidental reflections fleetingly evoking a personal recollection of Erasmus" (42) -- about contemporary customs and situations that usually suggested some sort of continuity with the text. Thus, Erasmus cal ls to mind, for example, that "even today" the custom endures in Naples that some noble women go about with elegant and jovial young men in tow, or that "today" certain Saxons eat raw meat, above all pork. When Jerome, at the end of Book 2, applies a pagan etymology to his opponent's name -- Jovinian comes from Jove -- Erasmus lashes out at those, many of them priests presumably in Rome, who dream of the restoration of pagan glory, as if Christ himself possesses insufficient splendor. (43)

The third volume of the 1516 edition opens with the Adversus Helvidium, Jerome's vigorous defense of the perpetual virginity of Mary. Towards the end of this polemical work, he satirizes married life to the advantage of chastity. The parody of marriage, David Wiesen argued, was "not the spontaneous expression of moral indignation but a highly artificial caricature." (44) Erasmus concludes his commentary on the treatise with an antidotus that immediately precedes the argumentum to the Adversus Jovinianum. In the antidotus, (45) he begins his consideration of Jerome's depiction of marriage by taking the Church Father at his word. Jerome, Erasmus claims, displays too little esteem for marriage: parum tribuit matrimonio. Indeed, he does not approve of it unless it pursues chastity and imitates virginity. To be sure, he concedes that widows and wives can be holy women, but wives will have to cease to be wives, who "in the very necessity of marriage imitate the chastity of virginity." As if, Erasmus quips, wives co uld not be good who are wives willingly or gladly (libenter) and "who cherish that pleasure." Furthermore, Erasmus interprets Jerome as indicating that not even procreation makes marriage an honorable thing.

Erasmus asks: "Quid autem dicemus?" -- how are we to make sense of this? -- and answers with a series of rhetorical questions that presents a broad spectrum of alternatives. Does Jerome, moved by "a certain excessive love of chastity" actually mean what he says because he so often drives home his point? Or is he playing the part of a rhetorician and indulging in a declamatory game, as he himself admits? Or is Jerome more disposed to "this side," the advantages of chastity over marriage, because Helvidius put marriage and virginity on an equal footing? Or is it sufficient to recognize that Jerome does not slight marriage when he praises virginity, and that one must apply this statement of principle to his seemingly rather dour remarks?

The antidotus, beginning with a clearly stated evaluation of Jerome's satire of marriage and ending with a concatenation of unresolved questions, leaves at least two impressions: either Erasmus can do no better than react to Jerome in a muddled way, or he is engaging in studied ambiguity. The latter hypothesis is most likely the operative one. Erasmus freely realizes that Jerome shows little enthusiasm or admiration for marriage, but he wishes to prevent readers from concluding that because Jerome was no ardent advocate of marriage he was therefore its implacable opponent. True, his initial question -- "quid autem dicemus? -- results in interrogatory conjectures, not in a rhetorically definitive answer, but, answering a question with questions, for Erasmus' purposes, proves to be a rhetorically effective strategy. His chosen method of reply allows him to present arguments on all sides of the question, a favored strategy in humanist discourse. The onus consequently falls on the readers of Erasmus' edition to d raw their own conclusions. Yet, while the editor quizzes them, he also coaches them. Any serious student of Jerome, reading with Erasmus' eyes, would find all the arguments valid, but would equally see that they culminate in the final question. Erasmus asks his readers -- and Jerome's -- to read the Church Father in several contexts and guides them towards an hermeneutical principle for evaluating his stern talk: harsh words about marriage merely represent the obverse of praise for virginity.

Erasmus' antidotus to Jerome's Adversus Helvidium anticipates one aspect of his complex reception of the Adversus Jovinianum. He does not shy away from revealing his disagreement with Jerome. He acknowledges Jerome's unfavorable attitudes towards marriage and expresses his disapproval, but he is reluctant to mount a concerted criticism of the Church Father. In the Vita, Erasmus notes that Jerome's critics admonished him "to make certain revisions in his published works, especially in those in which he showed partiality in his praise of virginity and in this enthusiasm an unfair bias against marriage." (46) Here we observe a parallel with Erasmus' reading of Jerome in the antidotus: the bias against marriage is the by-product of the enthusiasm for virginity. Furthermore, Erasmus raises the issue in the larger context of his defense of Jerome against the machinations of Rufinus, the Church Father's bitter foe, who had suborned others to criticize him. A cautious approach appears also in the Encomium matrimonii (1518), Erasmus' declamation in praise of marriage. Erasmus is quite aware that in weighty books the Fathers of old sang the praises of virginity. Among them, Jerome admired virginity to such an extent, "that he was not very far from heaping abuse upon marriage and was summoned to recant by orthodox bishops." Jerome may have been dangerously close to attacking marriage, Erasmus contends, but, in fact, he did not do it. Erasmus proceeds to excuse Jerome's fervor by reason of the times in which he lived: "Verum donetur hic ardor iilis temporibus." (47) Editing the Adversus Jovinanum, Erasmus also mingles caution and criticism.

ERASMUS AGAINST JOVINIAN

Erasmus clearly indicates that he does not take Jovininan's side in the controversy. Consider his argumentum to the Adversus Jovinianum: he presents Jovinian, a cleric and former monk, as "an obscure but wealthy person, although neither learned nor eloquent" -- "homo obscurus, sed diues, neceruditus tamen nec aeloquens." Jovinian, Erasmus argued, tried to resuscitate the heresy of Basilides -- an obscure theologian of the second century associated with Gnosticism, Docetism, and metempsychosis -- whom Jerome denounced as "the teacher of licentiousness and of the most shameful embraces," someone, who by being revived in Jovivian's work, gave the Latin language its own heresy. (48) In his published commentaries on Basilides, Erasmus' argumentum continues, Jovinian attempted to show, from a false understanding of the testimony of Scripture, that virgins, widows, and wives were equal in merit "if they did not differ in the other activities of life." From Erasmus' perspective, Jovinian's inability to read the Scrip tures with understanding relates back to the initial description of Jovinian as lacking in erudition. His intellectual and rhetorical deficiencies open and close the argumentum. Erasmus concludes by noting that Jerome, in refuting Jovinian, ridiculed and attacked his "ignorance of letters and astonishing lack of polish in speech" (prodigiosa sermonis infantia). (49) The contest, consequently, is not principally one of orthodoxy versus heresy. The conflict, according to Erasmus' interpretation, is a rhetorical one. The Adversus Jovinanum demonstrates how the eloquent Jerome trounces the bewildering and barbaric Jovinian.

Jerome begins his treatise by stating that "holy brothers" had sent to him, from Rome, the commentaries of Jovinian, asking that "I might reply to their foolishness and crush the Epicurus of Christians with evangelical and apostolic vigor." Erasmus' lemma Epicurum Christianorum introduces the following discussion: "Epicurus the philosopher located the end of goodness in pleasure, not only of the soul but also of the body. And this is characteristic more of beasts than of a human being." In jovinian, Christians have encountered their own Epicurus, "who excessively (tantopere) favored marriage and the eating of meat." Jerome's epithet, Erasmus observes, is an elegant change of name ([LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and also an extraordinary type of emphasis, the rhetorical device of implying more than what is actually said.50 Erasmus' negative characterization of Epicurus finds an echo in the assessment of other Renaissance writers who derided -- and mistook -- the Greek philosopher's ethics as a base sens ualism that reduced human beings to beasts. The scholium may represent Erasmus' harshest comment on Epicurus, but it is markedly inconsistent with the discussion of Epicureanism in his other writings. As with Francesco Filelfo, Lorenzo Valla, and some other humanists, Erasmus was quite capable of attempting a rapprochement between Epicurean ethics and Christianity. (51) Such a reconciliation is not rhetorically appropriate here, however, since Erasmus does not wish to associate himself with Jovinian. Rhetoric is the key to understanding the import of this scholium. Whereas Jerome attacks the moral integrity of Jovinian, Erasmus transfers the insult to the rhetorical plane. He praises Jerome not for defaming Jovinian's character, but for employing a clever rhetorical device.

At the end of Book 1 of his polemic, Jerome refers to Epicurus again, but this time without insulting Jovinian. The philosopher emerges towards the end of a recital of testimonies against marriage on account of the trouble that wives cause their husbands. Jerome writes: "Epicurus, the champion of pleasure (voluptatis assertor), says that it is uncommon for a wise man to marry because marriage is fraught with many misfortunes." (52) The scholium on Epicurus voluptatis assertor begins with a hint of "the rehabilitation of Epicurus" that Erasmus observed in process in his own day. (53) Erasmus asserts that although Epicurus should have been accorded greater approval, not without justification does Jerome add the tag voluptatis assertor. He continues: Marriage is so wretched an estate (res misera) that it found favor not even with Epicurus, who placed the end of all goods in pleasure, and yet the common run of men takes a wife chiefly for the sake of pleasure." (54) The scholium thus marks a rare occasion on whic h Erasmus comes close to the antimatrimonial and ascetic thrust of the Adversus Jovinianum; nevertheless, he ends not by discouraging marriage, as Jerome does, but by complaining that his contemporaries marry for the wrong reason. He makes a similar complaint in his treatise on Christian marriage. (55)

After branding him "the Epicurus of Christians," Jerome complains that Jovinian's prose is unintelligible: his writing displayed so many barbarisms and "his most foul discourse was mixed up with so many defects (tantis vitiis)" that he could understand neither his speech nor his line of argument. The reference to Jovinian's defective style provoked this outburst from Erasmus:

Where are those scoundrels who consider it Christian to speak like a bumpkin? With what shouts of scorn did Jerome attack this man's inelegant speech? But what would he have said, if he had heard those sophistical theologians, compared to whom Jovinian could seem like a Messalla? (56)

The last question remains unanswered, but there can be no doubt about what Erasmus is thinking. For a brief moment, he explicitly allows the conflict from the patristic past to have a broader, contemporary cultural relevance. Jerome, Erasmus claims, would have declared his contempt for scholastic doctors who were not interested in combining theology with eloquence. Indeed, he would have given them more trouble than Jovinian, who resembles Messalla, the orator of ancient Rome, more than the scholastic theologians. In this early scholium, Erasmus shifts the focus from Jerome's text to the larger struggle within which he found himself, the struggle to liberate theology from scholasticism and to fuse it with humanism.

Jerome then quotes a passage of bewildering prose from Jovinian, and Erasmus reasons that the text derives from a speech that Jovinian made at a party. That, he claims, is why Jerome introduces the passage by saying that Jovinian spewed it out, belching forth the previous day's drunkenness. "But why is it important," continues Erasmus, to want to explain this statement that Jerome says he is unable to understand? The speech, moreover, is so barbaric, so badly arranged and absurd (insulsus), that you would think that not only an uneducated person was speaking, but also either a drunkard or a lunatic, who himself has not understood his own words. (57)

Whereas Jerome simply quotes Jovinian's inept writing to ridicule him, Erasmus attempts to make sense of the passage in question by rendering it in more intelligible prose. Nevertheless, after revising Jovininan, he still thinks the reader has reason to mock, whatever interpretation one puts on Jovinian's words. (58)

Before he elaborates his own position, Jerome relates Jovinian's arguments in favor of marriage. The latter, for example, recalls that when Rachel demanded of Jacob, "Give me children, but, if nor, I will die," her husband replied: "Surely, I cannot take God's place who has made you barren?" Jerome reproduces Jovinian's comment on Jacob's response: "'To such an extent,' he says, 'did he [i.e. Jacob] know that the fruit of marriage is due to the Lord, nor to a husband.'" Erasmus, in turn, informs the reader that Jerome has made fun of "this foolish concluding exclamation (stultum hoc epiphonema) by Jovinian, as if God, and not a husband, begets children." (59)

In his scholia, Erasmus notes several other instances of Jovinian's stultitia. When Jerome writes that Jovinian "praises Samson and exalts the uxorious Nazarite with amazing adulation," Erasmus comments: "What should have been condemned in Samson, that man foolishly (stulte) praises. Uxorious, according to Erasmus, means to be excessively devoted to a wife (uxori addictior), and Samson "yielded to Delilah after the fashion of lovers. And, nevertheless, he exalts this man, who deserved censure, with wondrous adulation." (60) Jerome asks rhetorically what he should say about Solomon, a member of Jovinian's catalogue of husbands, whom Jovinian holds up as a type of Christ. Erasmus knows what to say. The comparison between Solomon and Christ is a "ridiculous" one. Solomon was uxorious, but Christ a virgin and the prince of virgins. Solomon acts as a type of Christ in as much as he favored peace, not because he was uxorious. (61) After Solomon, Jovinian "suddenly moves on to Elijah and Elisha." This makes no sense to Jerome since these two prophets were never married. Erasmus begins his comment with a definition of stultitia: "The rhetoricians call it stultitia when someone mentions things which not only contribute nothing to a case but also harm it, as in the example of Elijah and Elisha, both of whom lacked a wife." Erasmus reminds us of Quintilian's warning not to say anything beyond one's subject, for superfluity consists in whatever encumbers or serves as an obstacle to one's audience. "Therefore," concludes Erasmus, "how much more foolish is it to treat of things together that work against you?" As Jovinian repeats his mistakes, Erasmus repeats his criticisms. When, according to Jerome, he refers to the prophet Daniel, Erasmus quips: "What can be more foolish than this orator, who produces an example of chastity for the purpose of praising marriage?" (62)

JEROME AND THE DISTORTION OF MEANING

Erasmus does not disguise his contempt for Jovinian, but, for the most part, Erasmus assails Jovinian's rhetoric. He does not dwell on his cause; nor does he champion it. Indeed, as we have already seen, Erasmus approaches Jerome's position when he states that Jovinian praised marriage too much. While he takes note of the deficiencies of Jovinian's rhetoric more than of his argument, Erasmus pays rather more attention to what Jerome expresses, not simply how he expresses himself. To be sure, he does pause to point out Hieronymian eloquence. Jerome, for example, elegantly denotes beginning a battle with the ablative absolute commissa pugna, "for those who engage in close combat (qui conserunt manus) are properly said to be engaged (committi)." (63) In his catalogue of worthy pagan women, Jerome writes "Penelopes pudicitia Homeri carmen est" -- literally "Penelope's chastity is Homer's song." For Erasmus, the ellipse "Homer's song" standing for "the subject of the song" (and making possible a syntactic parallel ism: genitive, nominative; genitive, nominative) was a mark of Jerome's elegant speech. (64)

From the point of view of philology and rhetoric Jerome aroused Erasmus' admiration, but the humanist editor on several occasions found fault with the Church Father's biblical exegesis. Erasmus was well prepared to evaluate Jerome's scriptural interpretation. His Annotations on the New Testament first appeared in March 1516, six months before his edition of Jerome's opera omnia. No doubt, the work on the former project influenced the latter, and vice versa. Almost half of the some 350 patristic references in the Annotations are to Jerome. Erasmus employs the Church Father's authority to justify a particular reading of a New Testament passage, yet, as Erika Rummel affirms, he "did not accept his authority unreservedly, subjecting his comments to a critical review and occasionally rejecting them." (65) Erasmus' exegetical acumen, prominent in the Annotations, is also at work in his scholia on Jerome.

While Erasmus did not openly confront the argument for the superiority of virginity in the Adversus Jovinianum, he did question some of its scriptural underpinnings. Jerome places Paul in the vanguard of his attack on Jovinian and begins with a long analysis of 1 Corinthians 7, the longest New Testament text on marriage and the relative merits of marriage and virginity. (66) However, one passage from the biblical chapter (vv. 17-24) appears to digress from the principal theme. Here Paul advises that Christians should remain content with the calling they have from God: the circumcised should not try to hide their circumcision, the uncircumcised should not seek circumcision, nor should slaves request manumission. Jerome argues that circumcision, uncircumcision, slave, and free must be adjusted to a higher sense and depend on Paul's previous remarks about marriage. Thus, according to Jerome's exegesis, to be circumcised means to be circumcised from a wife, to be a celibate. Such men should not marry. Elizabeth C lark refers to this exegetical strategy of collapsing scriptural texts into an interpretative framework to which they are not relevant as "textual implosion," and singles out as a specific example of this Jerome's deployment of the above Pauline passage for his ascetic agenda. (67) In the second and third Erasmian editions of Jerome's works, a terse printed marginal note placed at the beginning of the exposition of Paul's text reads: "coacta interpretatio" -- "a forced Interpretation." (68)

The idea of Jerome's exegetical violence was already present in the scholia of Erasmus' first edition. In his assault upon Jovinian, the Church Father brings to bear a vast array of biblical weapons. One of these is the Song of Songs, whose proper theme, according to Jerome, is virginity; not marriage. When Jerome states that Mount Hermon, mentioned in Song 4:8, refers to consecration, Erasmus finds his interpretation less than credible: "Interpretationem nonnihil torquet Hieronymus." Torquere can mean to twist or to wrench, even to torture. Thus Jerome twists or distorts the meaning of the text. Erasmus, however, attenuates his criticism by qualifying torquere with the adverb nonnihil: "Jerome somewhat distorts the interpretation." (69)

The same cautious criticism occurs several scholia down the page when Erasmus disagrees with Jerome's revision of Romans 12:3. Jerome takes exception to the reading of Latin codices that relate Paul's admonition to think reasonably, literally, to think with the purpose of being moderate: "sapere ad sobrietatem" in the Vulgate. (The New Revised Standard Version has "to think with sober judgment.") Jerome believes the Greek, [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], should be translated as ad pudicitiam: one should think chastely. Erasmus comments: "Jerome is somewhat distorting this passage to the advantage of his cause." It makes better sense to use modestia or sobrietas -- both words mean "moderation" or "sobriety" -- than pudicitia. The Greek phrase means "for the purpose that they be sober or moderate, not insolent and haughty." Chastity (pudicitia) is not at issue in the passage from Paul, but "the harmony that does not endure among the proud-hearted, but among the modest." (70)

The meaning of the noun, [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], a cognate of the verb [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], formed the basis of another one of Erasmus' disagreements with Jerome's exegesis. 1 Timothy 2:9 prescribes that women should dress with propriety and moderation: [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Jerome rejects the Latin translation sobrietas, preferring castitas (chastity). Erasmus points out that the Greek noun sometimes means sobriety or temperance, sometimes moderation or modesty, sometimes chastity. These words for the most part are closely connected. Even though sobrietas is a good translation, "Jerome snatches the advantage of his argument and distorts this saying for the defense of his position." (71) Here Erasmus does not qualify Jerome's exegetical twisting. Curiously, when Jerome takes the adjective [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] - [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in the accusative - as applied to the ideal bishop in 1 Timothy 3:2 to mean "chaste" (pudicus), Erasmu s simply observes: "Jerome promotes his cause, as it is fitting in a controversy, yet nothing prevents us from translating [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as sobrium." (72)

For the most part, Erasmus' scholia correspond with his exegesis in the Annotations as well as in the Paraphrases on the New Testament. A note on Romans 12:3 attributes Jerome's translation to his "zeal for defending virginity" Erasmus rejects the translation, explaining that the Greek verb means "to be temperate, modest, and sober. Sometimes it also refers to chastity, but certainly not in this place." Paul, in Erasmus' paraphrase on this passage, requires a believer to be sensible and modest: "sed sobrio modestoque sit animo." (73) A note on 1 Timothy 3:2 records that Ambrose translated [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as pudicum, something which "greatly pleased Jerome." The superior translation, however, is "sober and mentally sound." Accordingly, in the paraphrase, sobriety is a necessary quality of a bishop. (74)

Erasmus does not comment on [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in the Annotations, but, surprisingly, both his translation of and paraphrase on 1 Timothy 2:9 contradict his scholium. Erasmus, who reveals Jerome's distortion of the meaning of the scriptural passage, upholds the Church Father's interpretation in his own exegetical work. Departing from the Vulgate, which reads that women should be adorned "cum verecundia et sobrietate" -- " with modesty and sobriety," Erasmus in his New Testament prefers a Hieronymian approach: "cum verecundia & castitate." The paraphrase indicates that women should be covered with a garment that manifests modesty, decency, and chastity (modestia, pudor, pudicitia). (75) The inconsistency between Erasmus' interpretation and his criticism of Jerome's no doubt does not surface very often.

Indeed, consistency returns in Erasmus' analysis of 1 Corinthians 7:1, a passage of greater significance than the previous three, for with this verse begins the New Testament's most sustained treatment of marriage. Jerome's reading, identical with that of the Vulgate, was "bonum est homini mulierem non tangere" -- "it is good for a man not to touch a woman." According to Jerome's logic, "if it is good not to touch a woman, therefore it is evil to touch." Erasmus disagrees on several counts. He begins his comment by noting the Greek verb [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], which Jerome had rendered as tangere, and continues: "that is, not to have dealings with a wife and to stay away (abstinere) from marriage. For we touch that from which we do not keep a distance (non abstinemus)." No one should merely understand touching in terms of physical contact. (76) Yet, Erasmus adds in 1524, this is how Jerome on several occasions "violently interprets" the verb in praise of chastity. In support of his position, Er asmus, again in 1524, quotes from Virgil, namely Dido's lament that she could not live without experiencing, literally touching, the troubles (non tangere curas) of marriage (Aeneid, 4, 551). (77) It is evident too that Erasmus disagrees with Jerome's reading of the verb's object since he takes [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to mean wife, not woman, but he notes this specifically only in the Annotations. (78) In the scholium subsequent to the one on non tangere, he rejects Jerome's interpretation of bonum. Paul, Erasmus claims, did not intend bonum ([LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in Greek) as the opposite of vice, but he says bonum est in place of expedit, it is expedient or advantageous, and by malum he means incommodum, inconvenient or disadvantageous. Unlike Jerome, Erasmus perceives no moral judgment in Paul's admonition against marrying. (79)

In the Annotations, we encounter echoes of the above criticisms of Jerome's interpretation of tangere and bonum. Against Jovinian, Erasmus observes, "he deliberately twists this verb to plain touching" -- studio torquet hoc verbum ad simplicem contactum -- "as if the danger also lay in the touching itself, and not merely in sexual intercourse." The manipulation of a word's meaning might be permissible in Scripture, but, Erasmus continues, "I would not allow this to happen in a serious debate, although Jerome actually gives himself special permission for this." After disagreeing with Jerome's reading of bonum, Erasmus, employing the verb torquere again, indicates that Jerome "somewhat distorts these things" because he is determined to win an argument, "especially since he thinks that it makes a great difference whether someone should be taught or defeated, enlightened (initiandus) or entrapped." (80)

Erasmus shows equal determination in winning his own argument. His own translation of 1 Corinthians 7:1 reads: "Bonum est homini uxorem non attingere" -- "It is good for a man not to touch his wife." Erasmus retains "bonum," but substitutes "uxorem" (wife) for "mulierem" (woman). This substitution is crucial because it directs attention away from physical contact with women in general and towards sexual relations with wives. The paraphrase on 1 Corinthians 7:1 takes greater liberties. The Erasmian Paul contends that for many reasons it would be "advantageous (commodum) to refrain completely from dealings with wives." (81)

While Erasmus is generally critical about the distortion of the meaning of Scripture, he can express admiration for Jerome's manipulation of words and facts in other settings. Within the framework of his defense of fasting in Book 2, Jerome quotes Horace. The poet writes:

If a laugh is what you want, you will come to see me,
Plump and sleek with a well-cured hide, a pig from Epicurus' herd
                                  (Epistulae 1, 4, lines 15-16).

Jerome claims that Horace jests with these verses "in order to mount a bitter attack on those people who indulge in pleasure" -- in morsum voluptuosorum hominum. Keying a note to in morsum, Erasmus observes that Jerome "marvelously twists" (mire torquet) Horace's meaning, as if the poet were not giving a sincere description of himself, but, under the guise of his persona, was criticizing those who accurately fit his description. (82) The phrase mire torquet recurs in a later scholium. Towards the end of his polemic, Jerome sneers at Jovinian:

Indeed, if you had not arrived on the scene, the drunkards and belchers would not have been able to enter paradise. Congratulations on your virtue, I mean, your vices! Within your fortifications you also have Amazons: with breasts bared and arms and knees uncovered, challenging the men coming against them to the battle of lust. (83)

Noting the reference to Amazons, Erasmus points out:

What has been written about the Amazons he wonderfully misrepresents (mire torquet) with reference to Jovinian. For these had exposed, that is, bared breasts, not so that they could fight more freely, as with those [Amazons] of yore, but so that with their naked bodies they might entice men to lust. (84)

It was one thing for Jerome to twist Horace and mythology to his purpose, quite another, however, to play fast and loose with etymology. Erasmus did not leave unchallenged Jerome's derivation of cadibes, or coelibes in Erasmus' orthography. Celibates were so called "because they who refrained from sexual intercourse were worthy of heaven (coeli digni)." (85) In the first and second editions of the Church Father's works, as well as in the third edition printed by Chevallon, the lemma coelibes introduced the comment that celibates refer "not to those who live chastely, but to those who lack wives. But Jerome, who also wants a celibate to be understood to take his name from heaven, distorts this somewhat too." (86) From this, Erasmus adds in the expanded scholium that appears in the third edition printed in Basel (1536-37), theologians have derived the firm conviction that to be a celibate means to live in chastity and continence. Yet he points out, Quintilian distinguishes a coelebs from a married man (Institut io oratoria, 5, 10, 26) and when Horace refers to himself as a coelebs (Odes, 3, 8, line 1), he is not preaching up his continence, since he often acknowledges the lack of this, but he indicates that he is without a wife. The Roman jurists Galus and Modestus, Erasmus continues, put forward an etymology that traced the celibate back to heaven, as if coelibes were said to be coelites (heavenly beings). Yet to them coelites neither were bachelors nor lived chastely but were mired in adultery, fornication, and pederasty -- "love affairs with boys." The jurists, however, understood coelibes to refer to those who lived gently and peacefully, such that one could attribute to them the life of the gods. Hence we have the proverb: "Qui non litigat, coelebs est" -- "He who does nor quarrel is a celibate." (87)

Erasmus' source of information on Gaius and Modestus remains unclear. In his Institutes, Gaius nowhere discusses the etymology of caelebs. Perhaps Erasmus' starting point was the passage from the Institutio oratoria (1, 6, 36) in which Quintilian, criticizing absurd etymologies, mentions Gavius, a possible form of Gaius, and Modestus together. The former associated caelibes with caelites because they were free of a very heavy burden. The latter called those who were without a wife by this name because Saturn had his genitals cut off by Caelus.

Whatever Erasmus' source may have been, his purpose in the scholium is quite clear, to disqualify another point in Jerome's campaign in favor of sexual renunciation. In the first three editions, he limits himself to a circumspect criticism: Jerome "somewhat" misrepresents the meaning of caelebs. In the revised third edition, he reinforces his criticism by showing from Quintilian and Horace what the word actually means. The reference to Gaius and Modestus is a piece of dubious rhetorical overkill, designed to pillory the supposed connection between celibacy and heaven by yoking it to sexual immorality. Despite the sustained attack on the misrepresentation of the meaning of caelebs, Erasmus takes care to maintain his cautious attitude towards Jerome. His refutation is occasioned by the conviction of unidentified theologians. Of course, this strategy of deflection is not entirely successful because the theologians ultimately owe their belief to Jerome's etymology.

CONCLUSION

Even this incipient attempt at analyzing Erasmus' scholia indicates that we may not draw conclusions about his critical reading of the Adversus Jovinian urn, in particular, and of Jerome in general with the same ease that propelled some of the Church Father's exegetical and etymological pronouncements. In aggregate, the scholia show that Erasmus as reader and editor was primarily interested in elucidating Jerome's text, not in extolling or challenging it. Nevertheless, it is clear that from the perspective of rhetoric, his sympathies do not lie with Jovinian, whom he castigates as an imbecile in the art of persuasion. Jerome would have applauded Erasmus' jibes at Jovinian's infantia and stultitia. In 1524, Erasmus expanded his preface to the volume that contained Jerome's polemical works by consolidating his defense of the Church Father's polemical enterprise; his partiality, comments Rice, "led to uncharitable verdicts on Jerome's enemies." (88)

Does rejection of Jovinian amount to accepting Jerome's position on virginity and marriage? The only evidence for the affirmative manifests itself in a few isolated comments that demonstrate no more than a tendency to agree with Jerome, not a decisive endorsement of Jerome's ascetic rigor. Erasmus is not emphatically on Jerome's side. If he is not wholeheartedly with Jerome, is he against Jerome? The scholia that criticize Jerome's exegesis and etymology of caelebs suggest discontent or at least impatience with the Church Father for conscripting biblical passages and misrepresenting a word's meaning in his fight for the triumph of virginity over marriage. Nevertheless, Erasmus' comments do not constitute a sustained refutation of Jerome's argument. Perhaps we can see them as a parallel to the scholia on Jovinian's discourse. While the argument of the one falters because of rhetorical ineptitude, the argument of the other suffers from the coercive manipulation of Scripture and Latin vocabulary. Erasmus, in the limited way in which he acts as a referee in his edition of the Adversus Jovinianum, evaluates not so much the merits of the contending arguments as their credibility or persuasiveness. Jerome, of course, is the superior rhetorician, but that does not prevent his argument from being flawed in places, and that does mean that his conclusion is the correct one. Erasmus is on the side of the eloquent Jerome against the barbaric Jovinian, but he does not resolutely stand with or against "the inflexible champion of chastity." (89)

The brief antidotus to the Adversus Jovinianum makes the latter point clear, but in the form of an attenuated comment that diverts attention from the controversy of the late fourth century to a controversy of medieval scholastic theology. "There are several things in these two books," Erasmus begins, "that could give vehement offense" (quae vehementer possent offendere). This is especially the case with reference to the dispute about the status of marriage as a sacrament. Strangely enough, Jovinian did not call to mind that marriage was a sacrament when he sang its praises; nor did Jerome when he refuted him. (90) The speciousness of Erasmus' diversionary strategy need not detain us here. He was fully aware that Jerome and his contemporaries never thought of marriage as a sacrament in the way that medieval and Renaissance Catholics did. The antidotus continues the cautious approach of the scholia. The initial laconic statement both recognizes the offense one could take from reading the Adversus Jovnianum and diffuses it by expressing it, not in the indicative mood, but in the subjunctive, even if it is a subjunctive of characteristic. Erasmus does not explicitly associate Jerome with the "two books;" he only names the Church Father in the context of a controversy that took place centuries after his death.

An analysis of the editorial apparatus with which Erasmus surrounds Jerome's writings shows that the transmission of ancient Christian culture in the Renaissance went beyond the retrieval and restoration of texts to include the "decoding" of those texts. (91) Erasmus' argumenta, scholia, and antidoti bear witness to the ways in which he read Jerome and he wished others to read him. Of the ways in which humanists read the classics of ancient Greece and Rome, Anthony Grafton observed: "Radically different styles of reading both competed and coexisted, in the same library and even in the same intellectual." (92) Erasmus read Jerome as an observer of contemporary customs and, given his references to classical poetry, as a literary critic. More important for the purposes of this study, the humanist read the Church Father as a grammarian and as a biblical scholar. The combination of grammar and exegesis signifies not a deliberate confusion of the sacred and the secular in Erasmus' appropriation of Jerome but a cons cious attempt to imitate Jerome's own methods in Christian authorship. The methods were similar, but the outcomes could be different. Promoting sexual renunciation, the Church Fathers expanded the meaning of Scripture in order to limit and discipline the body. (93) The effect of Erasmus' reading of Adversus Jovinianum was to contract the text's ascetic significance.

Without a doubt, Jerome served as the outstanding ally in Erasmus' efforts to wed rhetoric and theology, and in publishing Jerome, Erasmus could assert the influence of his own scholarship upon the Renaissance republic of letters. Scholarly analysis should not stop here, however. We must not limit ourselves to the observation that the humanists transmitted the texts they privileged and to the symbolic effect the work of editing and publishing had on literary careers in the Renaissance. We must go on to investigate how the humanists encountered ancient culture, pagan and Christian. We must study not only the use to which Erasmus put Jerome as exemplar, but also the way in which he, as a scholar, read Jerome and the relationship between publication and critical reading. The answers to these questions have been lying for centuries in the humanist annotations on classical texts in general and in Erasmus' scholia on Jerome in particular. It is time to pay attention to these sources: ad fontes!

* The research for this article was made possible by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I gratefully acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Mark Vessey, Mechtilde O'Mara, David Mirhady, John Craig, Chris Crawford, and James K. Farge, as well as the helpful suggestions of the anonymous readers of this article.

(1.) Rice, 1988, 18.

(2.) Rice, 1988, 25.

(3.) Rice, 1976, 200.

(4.) Stinger, 1977; Rice, 1985.

(5.) See the collections of essays edited by Grane et al., 1993 and 1998; Reception of the Church Fathers, 2; and Steinmetz, For Backus' contributions, see 1990, 1993a, 1997a, 1997b.

(6.) Bene; Godin, 1982.

(7.) Gorce; Peters; Chantraine; Olin, 1979; Olin, 1987; den Boeft, 1988; Sider; Backus, 1995; den Boeft, 1997; Pabel, 1997.

(8.) Rice, 1985, 116-36; Biecenholz, 1966, 90-92; Coppens; Maguire; Godin, 1988; Bietenholz, 1989, Chomarat, 1999. For the most recent monograph on the origins, development, and principal hermeneutical components of Erasmus' edition, see Clausi. His book must serve as the essential prolegomenous study to any derailed and comprehensive research on Erasmus as editor of Jerome.

(9.) Olin, 1987, 44, 50, 51. Olin subsumes all of Erasmus' patristic scholarship into the program of restoring theology: Olin, 1979, 33-35. For a similar view see den Boeft, 1997, 539, 548, 569, and Clausi, 7, 129, 135, 178-79.

(10.) Jardine, 7.

(11.) Rice, 1985, 132.

(12.) Jardine, 74.

(13.) Vessey, 67, 73, 77, 80.

(14.) "Russo, 201-51; Rice, 1985, 68-83.

(15.) McManamon, 1985, 357-63; McManamon, 1996, 126-35. For a critical edition and translation of his sermons, see Vergerio. For the general humanist appreciation of Jerome, see Rice, 1985, 84-99.

(16.) Stinger, 1977, 123.

(17.) Grafton, 1997, 30-31.

(18.) On this iconographical aspect see Rice, 1985, 104-13, and Russo, 253-73.

(19.) Hamm, 131-32.

(20.) Buck, 164 and nn. 51, 52.

(21.) Vessey, 98.

(22.) Stinger, 1997, 475.

(23.) CWE, 61:5-10; quotation, 10.

(24.) Godin, 1988, 695 (quotation); CWE 61:62.

(25.) CWE, 61:62.

(26.) Gorce, 273.

(27.) Vessey, 94.

(28.) CWE, 61:xxix-xxxi.

(29.) Chomarat, 2:894 (quotation), 895.

(30.) Telle, 243.

(31.) Reese, 552, 558-59, 566-67; CWE, 69:310, 387, 391.

(32.) Erasmus: Jerome, 1516, 7v.

(33.) Kelly, 188. Modern scholars have criticized Jerome's dim view of sexuality and marriage. See Cavellera, 1:161, 163; Wiesen, 116, 152-60; Kelly, 187; Colish, 2:81; Hanna and Lawler, 17-31.

(34.) Brown, 377-78, 429; quotations on 377, 429.

(35.) Markus, 45.

(36.) For a discussion of the early historiography, see Hunter, 1987, 47-49.

(37.) Hunter, 1993, 56-61, quotation on 61; Hunter, 1987, 50-61.

(38.) Markus, 40.

(39.) Oppel, 6. Not much scholarship exists on the influence of the Adversus Jovinianum. For an aspect of its medieval influence, see Delhaye. Jerome was the principal patristic source for Juan Luis Vives' highly influential conduct book, the De institutione feminae christianae, first published in 1524 and revised in 1538. On this see Pabel, 1999, 87.

(40.) Jerome, 1533, 20r-25v, 35r-37r.

(41.) Olin, 1987, 47. For a more derailed discussion of the historical context, significance, and function of Erasmus' scholia, see Clausi, 183-228.

(42.) Chomarat, 1:540.

(43.) Jerome, 1516, 29v, 44v, 45v.

(44.) Wiesen, 151.

(45.) Jerome, 1516, 7v.

(46.) CWE, 61:44.

(47.) ASD, I-5:404.

(48.) Jerome, 1516, 43r = PL 23:350B.

(49.) Jerome, 1516, 7v.

(50.) Jerome: Jerome, 1516, 7v = (PL 23:221A); Erasmus: Ibid., 24v.

(51.) Kraye, 378-79, 382, 383-84. For Erasmus' reconciliation of Epicureanism with Christianity, see De contemptu mundi (written in the 1480s but first published in 1521), CWE, 66:165-67, and the colloquy, Epicureus(153 1), CWE 40:1073-88. For an analysis of these texts, see Bultot, 209-27.

(52.) Jerome, 1516, 24r = PL 23:292C.

(53.) Bultot, 235.

(54.) Jerome, 1516, 30v.

(55.) In the Institutio christiani matrimonii, within the context of his criticism of the limitation of the consent required for marriage to the future spouses, Erasmus complains of Christian weddings instigated by lust: CWE, 69:306.

(56.) Jerome: Jerome, 1516, 7v = PL 23:221A. Erasmus (Ibid., 24v) remonstrates: "Vbi sunt isti, qui sanctum & Christianum putant rustice dicere? Hieronymus quibus conuitiis insectatur huius infantiam? Quid autem dicturus erat, si sophisticos istos audisset theologos: ad quos collatus Iouinianus, Messalla uideri queat?"

(57.) Jerome: Jerome, 1516, 8r = PL 23:222A-B. Erasmus (Ibid., 24v-25r) writes: "Apparet Iouinianum ita finxisse, quasi sermo superioris libri sit habitus in conuiuio .... Et ob eam causam dixerat paulo ante, hesternam crapulam ructans euomuit .... Quid autem attinet huius hominis sententiam uele exponere, quam Hieronymus negat se percipere potuisse? Tum sermo est adeo barbarus, adeo incompositus, & insulsus, ut non solum indoctum: sed uel ebrium, uel phreneticum loqui putes, qui nec ipse sua uerba intellexerit.

(58.) Jerome, 1516, 25r.

(59.) Jerome: Ibid., 8v = PL 23:226B-C; Erasmus: Ibid., 26r.

(60.) Jerome: Ibid., 8v = PL 23:226C; Erasmus: Ibid., 26r. Delilah, of course, was not Samson's wife. His wife, a Philistine woman, is mentioned in Judges 14, but her name is not given. Delilah was the woman he loved in the valley of Sorek (Judges 16:4).

(61.) Jerome: Jerome, 1516, 9r = PL 23:227A; Erasmus: Ibid., 26r.

(62.) Jerome: Jerome, 1516, 9r = PL 23:227A. Erasmus (Ibid., 26r) comments: "Stultitiam uocant rhetores, ubi quis adducit ea, quae non solum nihil conferunt ad causam, uerumetiam quae nocent: ut hoc exemplum Eliac & Elisae, quorum uterque caruir uxore.... Quintilianus admonet, ne quid extra causam dicamus. Nam quicquid superfluum est, uel hoc ipso officit, quod onerat auditorem. Quanto igitur stultius ea congerere, quae contra te faciant?"

(63.) Jerome (Jerome, 1516, 19r, cf. PL 23:271A) writes: "Quomodo in legionibus & exercitu sunt duces, sunt tribuni, sunt centuriones, sunt ferentarij: ac leuis armaturae, & miles gregarius, & manipuli, commissaque pugna uacant nomina dignitatum: & sola fortitudo quaeritur." Erasmus: Ibid., 27v.

(64.) Jerome: Jerome, 1516, 23r = PL 23:287C; Erasmus: Ibid., 29v. "Eleganter autem dixit carmen est, pro argumento carminis."

(65.) Rummel, 54, 56, 57 (quotation).

(66.) Jerome, 1516, 9r PL 23:228B.

(67.) Clark, 1999b, 132-33, 168.

(68.) Jerome, 1524, 24; Jerome, 1533, 9v; Jerome, 1536, 24. For Jerome's interpretation, see also PL 23:235D-237A.

(69.) Jerome: Jerome, 1516, 17v = PL 23:264B; Erasmus: Ibid., 27v.

(70.) Jerome: Ibid., 20v; PL 23:274C; Erasmus: Ibid., 27v-28r.

(71.) Jerome: Ibid., 16v = PL 23:260B; Erasmus: Ibid., 27v.

(72.) Jerome: Ibid., 19r = PL 23:270B; Erasmus: Ibid., 27v.

(73.) LB 6:630A, cf. CWE, 56:327; LB 7:817F, cf. CWE, 42:70: Paul admonishes that "each of you be sober and modest in spirit."

(74.) LB 6:934C; Ibid. 7:1043F = CWE, 44:19.

(75.) "LB 6:932B; LB 7:1042B, cf. CWE, 44:16 which translates pudor as "her sense of shame."

(76.) Jerome: Jerome, 1516, 9r = PL 23:229A; Erasmus: Ibid., 26r.

(77.) Jerome, 1524, 57; also Jerome, 1533, 21v; Jerome, 1536, 56.

(78.)LB 6:685B-C

(79.) "Jerome, 1516, 26r.

(80.) LB 6:685C, F.

(81.) LB 6:686A; LB 7:878D. For a more complete account of Erasmus' paraphrase on 1 Corinthians, 7, see Pabel, 2002.

(82.) Jerome: Jerome, 1516, 35v = PL 23:31513; Erasmus: Ibid., 45r.

(83.) Ibid., 43v: "Nisi enim tu uenisses, ebrii atque ructantes paradisum intrare non potetant. Macte uirtute, imo uitiis, habes in castris tuis & amazonas exerta mamma: & nudo brachio & genu, uenientes contra se uiros ad pugnam libidinum prouocantes." Compare PL 23:352A.

(84.) Ibid., 45v: "Quod de Amazonibus scriptum est, mire torquet in Iouinianum. Nam hae exertam, hoc est enudatam habent mammam, non ut expeditius pugnent, quemadmodum illae sed ut uiros ad libidinem prouocent, nudato corpore."

(85.) Ibid., 43v PL 23:35 1A.

(86.) Ibid., 45v; Jerome, 1524, 101; Jerome, 1533, 36v.

(87.) Jerome, 1536, 100.

(88.) See the 1524 preface to vol. 2 of the edition of Jerome's works translated in CWE, 61:99-103; Rice, 1985, 135.

(89.) Kelly, 194.

(90.) Jerome, 1516, 46r.

(91.) Grafton, 1990, 2, 6.

(92.) Grafton, 1997, 225.

(93.) Clark, 1999a, 154.

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