Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

HISTORY
laneous information on oriental history which the Greek world had acquired
since the days of Alexander the Great. During his stay in Constantinople Jerome
decided to translate and adapt the second book of Eusebius' Chronicle, consisting
largely of tables of chronological concordance. To make this more
attractive to the Latin reader of his own day he added material from Roman
history, largely taken from Eutropius, from Suetonius' De viris illustrious, and
from Roman lists of magistrates, and added a final section carrying on the
Chronicle from 325 till 378. The adaptation was made, as Jerome himself tells us,
in great haste. And though he displays his usual care for elegant writing, including
the observation of metrical clausulae, there are many errors and signs of
carelessness. The section which Jerome himself added is full of factual information,
but its judgements are marked by his usual violent prejudices and his
tendency to exaggerate the importance of his own circle of friends. Yet the
Chronicle answered a need and enjoyed immense popularity during the author's
lifetime and for many centuries afterwards.
Twelve years later, in 392, when he was established in his monastery at
Bethlehem Jerome wrote his second historical work, which answered a similar
need. Though Christianity was now firmly established as the state religion it was
still open to the charge that its literature was poor in quality and quantity in
comparison with that of paganism. As the devil has all the best tunes, so then
he had all the best books. At the prompting of Nummius Aemilius Dexter, son
of a bishop of Barcelona, who had already been proconsul of Asia and comes
rerum priuatarum, and who was to be Praetorian Prefect of Italy in the last year
of Theodosius' reign, Jerome compiled his De viris illustribus, a collection of 135
notes on Christian writers, both Greek and Latin, beginning with Peter and
ending with Jerome himself. Most of the information came from Eusebius'
Ecclesiastical history. But Jerome added much contemporary and Latin material
from his own reading. To make up his number he includes not only Jews and
heretics — a point for which Augustine censured him — but also Seneca, on the
basis of his spurious correspondence with St Paul. This first manual of patrology
is written in a simple and unadorned style. Like the Chronicle it betrays by its
errors and confusion the haste with which it was written. Yet it remains a
precious source of information. And, as with so much that Jerome wrote, it was
a pioneering work, breaking new ground. It was translated into Greek in the
early Middle Ages.
The richness of Greek Christian literature prompted the many translations
made by Tyrannius Rufinus of Concordia near Aquileia, friend and later
enemy of Jerome. He went to the east in the company of the elder Melania in
371, founded a monastery in Jerusalem and remained there until his return to
Aquileia in 397. From then until his death in 410 he was mainly engaged in
translating works of the Greek Fathers, particularly Origen, Basil and Gregory
750
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008