Sulpicius Severus' Use and Abuse of Jerome in the Dialogi

Jnl of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 58, No. 2, April 2007. f 2007 Cambridge University Press 189 doi:10.1017/S0022046906008931 Printed in the United Kingdom Vir Maxime Catholicus: Sulpicius Severus’ Use and Abuse of Jerome in the Dialogi by RICHARD J. GOODRICH This article examines Sulpicius Severus’ use of the image of St Jerome in his Dialogi, a work intended to defend Sulpicius’ earlier Vita Martini, as well as to censure the low standards of the Gallic clergy and ascetics. Sulpicius, by misrepresenting the contents of Jerome’s epistle xxii, was able to offer an indirect critique of his compatriots. Moreover he played to a secondary pro-Rufinian audience by reworking Rufinus’ arguments and casting them in Jerome’s face. These included such sore points as the reception of Jerome’s epistle xxii, his volte-face on the question of Origen and his excommunication by John of Jerusalem. This use of figured speech adds another dimension to this text, one which suggests that Sulpicius was not as friendly towards Jerome as has previously been thought. ieronymus Stridonensis, St Jerome, has never lacked for critics or detractors. The image of Jerome has always excited strong feelings. H The term ‘image’ is employed deliberately here. In speaking about Jerome, we are really discussing a literary doppelga¨nger, a calculated projection of the man. We know Jerome only through his works and are forced to form an impression of him based on the persona that emerges in those pages.1 But this limitation is not unique to our age; the great majority of late fourth- and early fifth-century readers also knew Jerome through a glass darkly. Jerome spent the last thirty years of his life tucked away in Bethlehem, a backwater far removed from the main centres of Roman political, social and theological activity.2 Jerome existed largely as an image built up in the minds of his readers. This paper has benefitted from the constructive criticism of a number of individuals, including Gillian Clark, the anonymous reader for this JOURNAL and those who heard it read at the Edinburgh Patristics Seminar and the Jerome of Strido Conference (Cardiff 2004). 1 See Mark Vessey, ‘Jerome’s Origen: the making of a Christian literary persona’, Studia Patristica xxviii (1993), 136–7, for the classical definition of a persona as the mask one dons before appearing before the public. 2 Jerome’s isolation from the world was a recurrent theme in his works. See, for instance, Jerome, ep. cxvii.4. For Jerome’s use of distance to construct a place for himself in other 190 RICHARD J. GOODRICH Although this is true to a certain extent of any writer, Jerome is dis- tinguished by the effort he devoted to crafting, projecting and defending his image through his writings. Whereas the personalities of some writers almost vanish behind their texts,3 Jerome’s overt self-promotion colours all his work. He portrays himself as an ascetic authority par excellence, a biblical exegete with the stature of an Origen4 and as a dogged exponent of orthodoxy – the hound of the heretics. One of my favourite images of Jerome may be found in his ep. xlv to Asella. Having just been driven out of Rome on charges that do not survive, Jerome wrote that ‘Before I became acquainted with the household of the saintly Paula, the entire city (Rome) resounded with my praises. Nearly everyone agreed in judging me worthy of the highest priesthood (i.e. the papacy). Damasus, of blessed memory, spoke my words. I was called holy, humble, eloquent.’5 Had events unfolded differently, hints Jerome, writing aboard the ship that would bear him away from Rome forever, the pontificate of Damasus might have yielded to a Hieronymian papacy. From this personal nadir, Jerome could not resist signalling the heights from which he had fallen, planting in his readers’ minds a hint of the glory that might have been. Jerome was a singularly important man and he had no intention of allowing his readers to forget it. Those who court the approbation of a fickle public run the risk of mockery or rejection. As will be argued in this paper, one reader of Jerome was clearly aware of the possibilities latent in Jerome’s relentless self-promotion. This man was Sulpicius Severus, the west’s leading exponent of St Martin of Tours, who employed Jerome to good effect in his Dialogi. In the following pages I will consider how Sulpicius used Jerome in two significant ways: to upbraid a Gallic audience that questioned Sulpicius’ custodianship of the reputation of St Martin of Tours; and to amuse a pro-Rufinian audience that had praised his earlier work, Vita Martini. Sulpicius, as we shall see, employed Jerome as a character in his staged debate, creating a mouthpiece for a hostile critique of Gallic practices and morals. But his aspirations went much farther than this limited goal; I will argue that in the Dialogi – a work that is extremely sophisticated6 and in my opinion largely people’s worlds see Philip Rousseau, ‘Jerome’s search for self-identity’, in Prayer and spirituality in the early Church, Queensland 1998, 132–4. 3 John Cassian is an excellent example of this. His reticence about himself makes it quite difficult to develop a sense of the man behind the texts. On Cassian’s elusiveness as a writer see Columba Stewart, Cassian the monk, Oxford 1998, 3. 4 Stefan Rebenich, Jerome, London 2002, 56; Vessey, ‘Jerome’s Origen’, passim. 5 ‘Antequam domum sanctae Paulae nossem, totius in me urbis studia consonabant. omne paene iudicio dignus summo sacerdotio decernebar; beatae memoriae Damasi os meus sermo erat; dicebar sanctus, dicebar humilis et disertus’: Jerome, ep. xlv.3, CSEL liv.325.6–9. 6 This sophistication has been pointed out by Bernd Reiner Voss, Der Dialog in der fru¨hchristlichen literatur, Munich 1970, 312, who demonstrated Sulpicius’ use of Cicero’s dialogues SULPICIUS SEVERUS AND JEROME 191 undervalued – Sulpicius took great liberties with Jerome’s literary image, employing what David Ahl labels ‘figured speech’ to poke fun at the master in a very subtle, clever way.7 Although this interpretation of Sulpicius’ work diverges from other recent studies of the Dialogi,8 it does go a long way toward explaining some of the distinctly peculiar features in Sulpicius’ treatment of the simple Bethlehem monk. The two audiences Sulpicius Severus’ Dialogi were written c. 404–6.9 The work purports to be the record of a discussion between Sulpicius Severus, an unnamed Gallic monk (Gallus) and Postumianus, a friend who had just returned from visiting the monks of Egypt. The work is divided into three books. In the first book Postumianus offers an account of his journey, seasoning it with marvellous stories about the sanctity and miracle-working abilities of the monks he had visited in the east. Book 2 stands as a counterpoint to book 1. Here the Gallic monk (Gallus) presents a number of tales about the incredible Martin of Tours, anecdotes intended to emphasise the superiority of Martin. Book 3 presses home this theme, although now, word having spread throughout the neighbourhood that Martinian stories were on offer, a large crowd gathers to witness the event. The work concludes with a summing-up by Sulpicius Severus (who has remained largely silent throughout the discussions) in which he avers that while the eastern monks are to be revered, in truth, there is no one anywhere in the world who can trump the example of Martin. The Dialogi were written with at least two audiences in mind. The obvious audience consists of the Gallic monks, priests and bishops who had read and doubted the stories contained in Sulpicius’ Vita Martini. Sulpicius, drawing on a handful of visits with Martin, had produced a hagiographical account of the great man that strained credulity and seemed to have met resistance among those who had known Martin. Scepticism about Sulpicius’ account is as a framework for his own. This extended to the appropriation and incorporation of a number of Ciceronian phrases (p. 312 n. 23). 7 David Ahl, ‘The art of safe criticism in Greece and Rome’, American Journal of Philology cv (1984), 174–208. 8 Clare Stancliffe, St Martin and his hagiographer, Oxford 1983, remains the most important account of Sulpicius’ work; of particular relevance to this article is Yves-Marie Duval, ‘Sulpice Se´ve`re entre Rufin d’AquileéetJe´roˆme dans les Dialogues 1,1–9’, 199–222, in Me´morial Dom Jean Gribomont, Rome 1988, a study that suggests the tension that Sulpicius might have felt if caught between a warring Rufinus and Jerome. Both of these studies build on the premise that the Postumianus character in Dialogi was sincere in his praise of Jerome. The approach developed in this article doubts the sincerity of this apparent flattery. 9 P. Coleman-Norton, ‘The use of dialogue in the Vitae sanctorum’, JTS xxvii (1926), 388; Stancliffe, St Martin, 6. Duval, Sulpice, 202, prefers 403–6 or 407. 192 RICHARD J. GOODRICH signalled by a speech near the end of book 1. Postumianus, having told how the Vita Martini had been reverently received all around the Mediterranean basin, turned his wrath on the local Gauls who disputed Sulpicius’ version: I shudder to recount what I heard recently, that some wretched man said that you lied repeatedly in that book of yours. This is not the voice of a man, but of the Devil! For he does not drag down Martin in this manner, but trust is drained from the Gospels. For since the Lord himself attested that the types of works which Martin has carried out were works that were to be done by all of the faithful, he who does not believe that Martin did these things does not believe that Christ said them.

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