Primary source · Latin

The Letters of Jerome

Name: The Letters of Jerome
Author: Jerome of Stridon

Jerome · AD 370–419

Patrologia Latina, vol. 22 (Migne) — manuscript witness to The Letters of Jerome — Patrologia Latina, vol. 22 (Migne) — 1845Blessed Jerome (Hieronymus) of Stridon · Public domain · Commons

What this text is

The most vivid correspondence of Christian antiquity — the dream-tribunal where Christ calls him a Ciceronian, the program of study for Eustochium, grief for Blesilla, Rome abandoned for Bethlehem.

Profile of Jerome of Stridon →

Interlinear passages

Word-for-word glosses of the original; the complete public-domain translation is linked below.

Letter 22.30 — the tribunal

CiceronianusA Ciceronianes,you arenonnotChristianusa Christian

Public-domain translations

W. H. Fremantle (NPNF, 1893)

Asked who and what I was I replied: 'I am a Christian.' But He who presided said: 'Thou liest; thou art a Ciceronian, not a Christian. For where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.'

Manuscript witnesses

Early medieval letter-collections

6th c. onward

The letters in ancient thematic collections; ep. 22 to Eustochium already copied in the 6th century.

PRINCIPAL WITNESSES

Patrologia Latina, vol. 22 (Migne)

1845

Standard pre-critical text of the corpus.

PRINTED PROXY

Provenance

Rome, Chalcis, Bethlehem, AD 370–419 — the most brilliant correspondence of the Latin church

Editions & scholarship

Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.

Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae (CSEL 54–56)
Isidor Hilberg, 1910–1918
The critical edition.
Select Letters of St. Jerome (Loeb 262)
F. A. Wright, 1933
Latin text with facing English.

Figures named in this text (21)

Complete public-domain text ↗