Woman’s Work In Bible Study And Translation
By A.H. Johns, A.M.
[Source: PetersNet.net - "Woman's Work in Bible Study
and Translations", from A.H. Johns, A.M.,
The Catholic World, The Catholic World (July 1912), "The Story of St.
Jerome, St. Marcella, St. Paula and St. Eustochium and the Latin Vulgate",
p. 463-477. Copyright 2002 Trinity Communications -
http://www.petersnet.net/research/retrieve.cfm?RecNum=2945.]
This interesting article recounts the story of Sts. Jerome,
Marcella, Paula and her daughter Eustochium and the role the women played in the
translation of the Latin Vulgate.
During the past year much has been said and
written regarding the King James version of the Bible—a version which,
fortunately for our glorious English speech, was made when England, as has
happily been expressed, was "a nest of song birds." The celebration of the
tercentenary of the completion of this notable undertaking was, among other
things, a tribute to the memory of those who builded a monument of literature
that will endure as long as the imperishable creations of Milton and
Shakespeare. But, while the Protestant world recalls the labors of those whose
purpose, three centuries ago, was to bring the Word of God to the knowledge of
the masses, and who, in doing so, fixed for all time the vigorous and solemn
character of "English undefiled," let us not forget those who, twelve centuries
before, were engaged in similar labors, and whose efforts, notwithstanding all
kinds of handicaps, were crowned with even more signal success.
I refer to the Latin translation of the Bible,
usually known as the Vulgate. In the opinion of most people, this stupendous
work was wholly and solely the work of one man—the famous father and doctor of
the Church, St. Jerome. In a certain sense this opinion is well founded; in
another it is entirely erroneous. Most of the actual work of translation, it is
true, was performed by St. Jerome, but, had it not been for three Roman women of
noblest patrician birth, it is safe to say that the Vulgate, as we now know it,
would never have been completed, and most probably never have been begun.
The story of this Herculean task reads more like a romance than veritable
history. It is the story of genius overcoming untold difficulties, of energy and
perseverance in the face of the seemingly impossible. But it is above all a
story of the value of woman's cooperation in a noble cause, of the far-reaching
effects of woman's influence . . . . Indeed, it may safely be said that we have
not in all history a more extraordinary instance of the paramount importance of
feminine collaboration in things of the mind, or of the efficacy of her benign
influence, when guided by affectionate
zeal and by keen and lofty intelligence, than in the production of the
Vulgate.
The chief characters in our story are Jerome,
Marcella, Paula and her daughter Eustochium, all four of whom are honored as
saints in the Catholic Church.
The Church of the Household is notable in Church
history, for the lectures and instructions on Scripture and cognate subjects,
which Jerome, after his return from the desert of Syria, gave in it for a period
of three years. Never before had Rome witnessed such ardor in the study of
Scripture, and never before or since was there assembled for such study so
distinguished and so intelligent a group of women of every age. So great
progress in the knowledge of Scripture had some of them made—notably Marcella, a
woman of remarkable mentality—that they were consulted by laity and clergy alike
on difficult passages of Holy Writ. But such was the modesty of Marcella that
she never gave an opinion as her own. She always said she but repeated what she
had learned from her master.
After the death of his friend and protector, Pope
Damasus, Jerome was unable to resist any longer the lure of the Orient, where he
had spent so many happy years. The desert and a life of solitude had, during his
sojourn in Rome, lost none of its attractions for him. Accordingly, in May, 385,
he set sail from Ostia for Antioch, accompanied by the regrets and the tears of
the inmates of his loved school on the Aventine. They had all learned to revere
him as their father and master in the spiritual life, and for them his departure
was regarded as little less than a calamity.
But Jerome was not the only one who had felt the
lure of the desert, or who had been impressed by the charms of the life led by
the solitaries of the Thebaid. After the death of her husband, and still more
after the death of her cherished daughter, the brilliant Blesilla, Paula
determined to flee from the distractions and commotions of Rome, and seek peace
and tranquillity where it had been found by so many thousands of others—in the
wilderness of Syria or Egypt. Years previously a noble Roman matron, Melania by
name, and a friend of Paula's, and descended from the same gens as herself, had,
with a number of women friends, sought and found peace and happiness in the
Thebaid, where they spent ten years. After this Melania built a convent for
herself and companions on the Mount of Olives, whence they wrote such glowing
accounts of the delights of monastic life, away from the noise and turmoil of
the world, that many were induced to follow their example.
It was only a few months after Jerome's departure
from Rome, when Paula and Eustochium, accompanied by a large number of
consecrated virgins and widows, set sail from Portus Romanus, at the mouth of
the Tiber, for Cyprus, where Paula received a cordial welcome from her old
friend, St. Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis. After a short visit here, the
travelers continued their voyage, and soon arrived at Antioch where they were
met by their father and friend, Jerome.
So eager was Paula to see the holy places in
Palestine, and to visit the monasteries in Egypt, about which she had heard so
much through her friend Melania, that she made preparations to continue without
delay the rest of the journey by land. She induced Jerome to accompany the
party, in order that all might profit by his knowledge of the places visited,
and of the history and traditions in which the countries to be visited were so
rich. They could not have had a better guide, or one more competent to make
their pilgrimage interesting and profitable. Their journeyings in the Holy Land
and Egypt, in both of which countries, under the guidance of Jerome, they
investigated everything with the keen interest and thoroughness of trained
Scriptural students, lasted a whole year. The Holy Land first engaged their
attention, after which they went to the land of the Nile. So fascinated was
Paula with the lives of the anchorets, whom she visited in their desert homes in
Nitria and Arsinoe, that she wished to spend the remainder of her days in Egypt
in a life of penance and contemplation. Jerome, however, was averse to this, and
persuaded her to establish a home for herself and companions in Bethlehem, near
the grotto of the Nativity. Returning then, from Egypt to Bethlehem, Paula had
two monasteries erected, one for women—two more were subsequently
constructed—over which she presided, and one for men, under the direction of
Jerome.
Paula and Eustochium lost no time in resuming
those studies, interrupted by their long voyage from Rome. While their
monasteries were being built they begged Jerome to read with them, in Hebrew,
the entire Bible from the beginning to the end, and explain all difficulties as
they presented themselves. They had hitherto studied the Sacred Books according
to their special attraction at the time, now one, now another. Jerome tried, but
in vain, to decline this delicate and laborious task. But, as in Rome, he was
finally forced to yield to the entreaties of Paula and Eustochium. Writing of
Paula many years afterwards, he says, "She compelled me"—compulit me—"
to read, with explanations, the Old and the New Testament to her and her
daughter."
This reading of the Bible together excited in the
two women a desire to make a still more profound study of each of the books of
the Sacred Text—especially the epistles of St. Paul. In searching for
commentaries on the perplexing letters of the Apostle of the Gentiles, they
discovered that there was practically nothing in Latin, and that, in Greek, only
Origen had written a few authorized tracts. Commentators had hitherto recoiled
before the attempt to explain writings that bristled with such countless
difficulties. Paula then begged Jerome to undertake an exegesis of the great
apostle, but he shrank in terror from so gigantic a task. Unable to overcome his
objections directly, Paula tried to secure by address what she so much desired.
She accordingly besought him to interpret the short epistle to Philemon, which
consists of but a single chapter. In this wise Jerome found himself committed,
in spite of himself, to the great work which the noble matron had so much at
heart. For, after the exegesis of St. Paul was once begun, she would no longer
accept any further excuses from the reluctant master, and thus she obtained one
commentary after another on all the books of the Bible.
From this time dates that holy and happy
influence which Paula and Eustochium began to exercise over the genius and the
labors of St. Jerome, an influence which persisted until the time of their
death; an influence which, as we shall soon see, ripened in the most abundant
and beautiful fruitage.
Jerome—and shall we not say the same of Paula and
Eustochium?—was at last fairly started on his great life-work—the work that has
won for him the admiration and the gratitude of all succeeding ages. All that he
had previously accomplished was but a preparation for the grand achievements
that were to follow, under the inspiration of the two peerless women that were
always at his side to assist and encourage him in times of difficulties and
trials. It was now that his studies in Rome, his travels and researches in Gaul,
Italy, Greece and Syria, Egypt and Palestine stood him in good stead, and
enabled him to achieve what would otherwise have been impossible, and what would
have been far beyond the strength and ability of any of his contemporaries.
Jerome was now fifty-five years of age, in the
zenith of his magnificent intellect, in the full vigor of a mind stored with the
accumulated learning and wisdom of a life devoted to unremitted study and
contemplation. But what was incomparably more to him and to the world, he had
near him two extraordinarily gifted and sympathetic souls, who thoroughly
understood him, and who knew how to direct his prodigious energy and stimulate
his genius to the loftiest flights. Most of his work was undertaken at their
instance, and completed through their enthusiastic co-operation. Their wish was
his pleasure; their request a command which he made haste to execute. This is
evidenced everywhere in his letters, and especially in the prefaces to his many
translations and commentaries.
On one occasion Paula desired to have a
translation of Origen's commentaries on St. Luke for the use of the inmates of
her convent. Although Jerome was then engaged in a work by which he set great
store, he at once interrupted it in order to comply with Paula's desire. "You
see," he writes her, "what weight a wish of yours has with me, for I have,
without hesitation, discontinued my great work on Hebraic Questions to
assume, at your request, the dry and ungrateful role of translator." On another
occasion, when, in spite of his ardor, he seemed on the point of losing courage
on account of the magnitude of the difficulties which confronted him, he was
prevailed on by the incessant entreaties of Eustochium—Quia tu, Eustochium,
indesinenter, flagitas—to complete one of the great works which had been
begun at the request of herself and her mother. On still another occasion, he
was on the point of leaving a peculiarly difficult task unfinished, but after
listening to Paula's arguments against such a proceeding, he ended by gratifying
her wish, remarking, "Obsequar igitur voluntati tuae—I shall submit to
your will."
The intellectual activity of Jerome, while
working under the inspiration of his two incomparable friends, was marvellous,
and the amount of work, which he accomplished under their benign influence, and
with their efficient co-operation, was enormous. There were commentaries on the
Old and New Testament, translations from the noted Greek doctors, and letters
innumerable to all points of the compass. From all parts of the Roman Empire
Jerome was appealed to as an oracle on all matters pertaining to Scripture, or
to traditions and doctrines based on Scripture. Besides this, he found himself
engaged in the violent controversies concerning the teachings of Origen and
Pelagius—controversies, which demanded much of his time, and withdrew him from
his more congenial work on the Bible. But Paula and Eustochium saw to it that
these interruptions did not interfere with their plans for an undertaking on
which they had so long set their hearts—a work which was to be the culmination
of the master's achievements. This was nothing less than a complete Latin
version of the Old Testament from the Hebrew original. All Jerome's previous
labors, before the inception of this colossal task, had paved the way for this
supreme effort, and nothing, after the task was actually begun, was permitted
for long to retard its progress or to militate against its ultimate termination.
At the urgent request of Paula, Jerome had,
shortly after the completion of the monasteries in Bethlehem, made what was
partly a new Latin translation of the Bible from the Septuagint, and partly a
revision of the old Italic version, which was in many respects seriously
defective. This great work, however, which, unfortunately, has been almost
entirely lost, was but a prelude to the more difficult and more important
translation from the Hebrew.
M. Ozanam does not hesitate to declare that this
version of the Bible from the original text was one of the most daring, as well
as one of the greatest, projects ever conceived. It was also one of the most
important to the western or Latin Church, for as yet it had no direct
translation from the Hebrew, while the Greek Church had no less than three,
besides the Septuagint. The old Italic version, as well as Jerome's revision of
it, and version from the Septuagint, was nothing more than a translation of a
translation. The time had come, however, when a Latin version from the original
Hebrew was an imperative necessity. Jerome, with his vast encyclopedic
knowledge, was the only man who was then sufficiently versed in Latin, Greek,
Hebrew and Chaldaic to attempt such a work. But no one realized more clearly
than he did the magnitude of such a bold and difficult enterprise. Nevertheless,
stimulated and encouraged by Paula and Eustochium, he set himself to work with
his usual energy, and with all the ardor of one in the bloomy flush of early
manhood.
This is not the place to recount the part, which
Paula and Eustochium had in this huge undertaking, but it can be truthfully said
that its history is intimately woven with their own history, and that the great
fecundity of their lives in Bethlehem, or rather their providential mission in
the Church, is exhibited at its best in Jerome’s version of the Bible, long
known as the Vulgate.
When Jerome began actual work on his opus
majus, he was in his sixtieth year—at an age when, according to certain
modern pseudo-economists, men should be retired from the sphere of active life.
He was also in delicate health, but his intellect was as clear and his mind as
active and as vigorous as ever. But neither weight of years nor impaired health
could restrain his impetuous nature, or render him less eager to comply with the
wishes of his perfervid friends, respecting a work before which any other man of
his age and infirmities would have recoiled as before the impossible.
The version from the Hebrew was not made in the
usual sequence of the Sacred Books, beginning with the first and ending with the
last, but according to the demands of the polemic of the time, or the expressed
preferences of Paula and others, to whose wishes he cheerfully deferred.
The part of the Bible first translated was the
first Book of Kings. No sooner had he completed this portion of his work than
Jerome submitted it to Paula and Eustochium for their criticism, so great was
his confidence in their capacity and judgment. "Read my book of Kings," he
writes. "Yes, my book, for it is truly ours which has been produced by such
profound study and such arduous toil. Read also the Latin and Greek editions and
compare them with my version."
And they did read and compare and criticise. And
more than this, they frequently suggested modifications and corrections, which
the great man accepted with touching humility and incorporated in a revised
copy. It may indeed be confidently asserted that no two persons since their time
have more thoroughly and more lovingly studied and compared the Latin, Greek and
Hebrew texts of the Scriptures, or have more completely made this occupation the
work of their lives, than did Paula and Eustochium. And it would be difficult to
name any other two persons that possessed a greater mastery of the three
languages required, all of which they spoke with precision and fluency. Even
that eminent doctor of the Church, St. Augustine, who devoted so much of his
life to the study and interpretation of Scripture, was far from being proficient
in Greek, and knew practically nothing of Hebrew.
But the service which Paula and Eustochium
rendered to the venerable hermit was not limited to their criticism, advice and
encouragement, to which he attached so much importance, and on which he so
greatly relied for the perfection of his work. Far from it. It was Paula, who
procured for him at her own expense, the books and rare manuscripts, which were
essential to the successful execution of his work. This was no small assistance;
for in those days the books and manuscripts that Jerome most needed—like
Origen's Hexapla for instance—were exceedingly rare, and were worth their
weight in gold.
Yet more. Much as has already been said of the
share of these noble women in the great scholar's translations and commentaries,
the most remarkable fact—a fact almost unknown—remains to be told. Under
Jerome's direction, they undertook the delicate and important work of copying
and revising Biblical manuscripts, in which they were aided by the inmates of
Paula's convent. This was particularly true in the case of the Psalms, for,
wonderful to relate, the Psalter which has been adopted in our Vulgate, is not
the translation made by Jerome from the Hebrew, but a corrected version of the
Septuagint executed by Paula and Eustochium.
While reading of these arduous labors of Jerome's
illustrious friends and collaborators, one loves [writes Armedee Thierry] to
picture them seated before a large table on which are spread numerous
manuscripts in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin; here the Hebrew text of the Bible,
there the different editions of the Septuagint, the Hexapla of Origen,
Theodotion, Symmacus, Aquila, and lastly the Italic Vulgate; to observe these
learned women controlling, comparing, copying with their own hands—and with
piety and joy—this Psalter…which we still chant, at least in great part, in the
Latin Church today. The mind is then involuntarily carried back to their palaces
in Rome, their ceilings of marble and gold, the army of eunuchs, servants and
clients, and to their life there, surrounded with all the delicacies of fortune
and all the pomps of rank. Like Mary, the sister of Martha, they believed they
had chosen the better part, and they rejoiced in all the fullness of their
hearts.
It was thus in Paula's convents, which were
likewise schools of theology and languages, and in which every one of her
religious was obliged to study Scripture, where originated that important
occupation of copying manuscripts, which became a universal practice in all the
monasteries of succeeding ages—an occupation to which we are indebted for the
preservation of the treasures of Greek and Roman letters and science, as well as
of the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and an occupation,
which, when we consider what it has saved for us, was probably one of the most
useful which was ever instituted.
The mind dwells with pleasure on the work
accomplished during medieval times in the scriptoriums of the Benedictines,
Franciscans and Dominicans, and on those presided over by Hroswitha, St.
Hildegarde, and the princess-abbess of Whitby, St. Hilda, the inspirer and
patroness of Caedmon, who was the precursor by a thousand years of the author of
Paradise Lost, but when recalling what we owe to these noble institutions,
let us not forget that the origin and exemplar of all of them was the one that
owed its existence to Paula and Eustochium in their famous convent in Bethlehem.
So highly did Jerome value the assistance given
him by his two devoted co-workers, that he dedicated nearly all his works to
them. Those that were not dedicated to them were inscribed to his old friend,
Marcella, who, from her convent on the Aventine, kept up a constant
correspondence with her friends in Bethlehem, and exhibited an unabated interest
in the study of Scripture, and as well as in the labors of her former teacher,
in whose achievements she gloried as much almost as did Paula and Eustochium.
The Pharisees of the time reproached Jerome with
his persistence in dedicating his books to women, and denounced the aged
hermit's action as a scandal. His reply to his accusers, in his preface to the
commentary on Sophonias, reveals the character of the man and his nobility of
soul so well that I reproduce from it the following paragraph:
There are people, O Paula and Eustochium, who
take offence at seeing your names at the beginning of my works. These people do
not know that Olda prophesied when the men were mute, that while Barak trembled,
Deborah saved Israel, that Judith and Esther delivered from supreme peril the
children of God. I pass over in silence Anna and Elizabeth and the other holy
women of the Gospel, but humble stars when compared with the great luminary,
Mary. Shall I speak now of the illustrious women among the heathen? Does not
Plato have Aspasia speak in his dialogues? Does not Sappho hold the lyre at the
same time as Alcaeus and Pindar? Did not Themista philosophize with the sages of
Greece? And the mother of the Gracchi, your Cornelia, daughter of Cato, wife of
Brutus, before whom pale the austere virtue of the father and the courage of the
husband —are they not the pride of the whole of Rome? I shall add but one word
more. Was it not to women that Our Lord appeared after His resurrection? Yes,
and the men could then blush for not having sought what women had found.
Could any modern champion of woman be more
eloquent and more chivalrous than this roused "Lion of Bethlehem?"
Paula did not live to see the completion of the
version from the Hebrew, of which she had been the chief inspirer and promotor.
Little, however, remained to be done after her death. This Jerome, although
almost crushed by the loss of one who had been his consolation and support in
countless trials and difficulties, and persecutions, hastened, under the gentle
but unceasing stimulation of Eustochium, to bring to a happy termination. When,
finally, the last page was finished, he placed it, as it were, on the tomb of
his sainted friend as a pious tribute to her memory. "Now," he writes in the
preface of this great work, "now that the blessed and venerable Paula has slept
in the Lord, I have not been able to refuse you, Eustochium, virgin of Christ,
these books which I promised to your mother."
Thus, then, after fifteen years of the most
strenuous toil, was finally completed, about the year 405, this first and
unique version of the Scriptures from the Hebrew into Latin—a version, which,
under the name of the Vulgate, was adopted by the Council of Trent as the
"authorized version" for the entire Catholic Church. It was a marvellous
achievement, which, all things considered, is without a parallel in the annals
of letters.
When Johnson's dictionary was published, "the
world," Boswell informs us, "contemplated with wonder so stupendous a work
achieved by one man, while other countries had thought such undertakings fit
only for whole academies." The statement is no doubt warranted, but with how
much greater truth could it be made of the Vulgate—a work involving incomparably
more preparation and labor, and requiring much greater equipment and a much
higher order of genius.
The English "Authorized Version" of the Bible was
the joint work of six committees, composed of forty-seven of the most noted
scholars of England, who labored nearly five years on a translation which was,
in reality, little more than a revision of previous versions.
Compared with the translation of Jerome, a noted
Scriptural authority in the Encyclopaedia Britannica writes as follows:
"It"— The Authorized Version—whose genealogy is to be traced up in a direct line
through every stage of Biblical revision to the Latin Vulgate—"stands
pre-eminent for its accurate representation of the original Hebrew and Greek,
and may challenge favorable comparison in this respect… with the Latin Vulgate."
Could more be said of the transcendent excellence of Jerome's work, or give a
clearer idea of its magnitude than these two statements? But then the translator
of the Vulgate had the supreme advantage of laboring under the benign influence
of a twin-star—Paula and Eustochium— the most brilliant luminary of the kind
that ever appeared in the ecclesiastical firmament during the long course of the
Church's history.
Jerome was seventy-five years of age when the
Vulgate was given to the world. But his labors were not yet ended. He had
promised Paula, during her life, to write commentaries on all the prophets. A
part of this task had been completed, but the most difficult part of it still
remained untouched. But the weight of years, failing eyesight, and broken
health, did not deter him from making good a promise made long years before.
With the assistance of Eustochium, who was always near him to sweeten his task
and alleviate his sufferings, he labored on with amazing ardor. Paula in the
tomb still animated him no less than when she was alive, and acted as his
inspiring guardian angel. Under the magic of her name and ever-persisting
influence, under the spell of her sweet and cherished memory, his indomitable
energy never flags, and his wonted activity never abates.
Paula had dreamed of a monument of exegesis in
which should be embalmed all the knowledge accumulated by the venerable solitary
during his long and busy life, a monument that should forever endure to the
glory of the Church and to his own glory. "And shall this monument," queried,
with anxious mien, the gentle, ardent Eustochium, "remain unfinished?" "No,"
exclaimed, in the language of Virgil, the high-minded old man, "dum spiritus
hos regit artus—while the breath of life remains—I shall remain faithful to
my promise."
The day was not long enough for him, so, by the
aid of the flickering light of a small lamp, he continued his labors far into
the night. Finally enfeebled by his great age, his eyes refused to serve him any
longer, and he was unable to decipher his Hebrew manuscripts without the aid of
some of his brethren in the monastery. They read to him the interpreters he
could no longer read himself, and he dictated to them his commentaries. At last,
in his eightieth year, his task was finished, and he was able to say to
Eustochium, who, after her mother's death, had been his unfailing support and
comforter: "You force me, O virgin of Christ, Eustochium, to pay you the debt
which I owe to your sainted mother. My affection for her is not greater than
that which I have for you. But you are present; in obeying you, I acquit myself
of the debt I owe both of you." The picture of the venerable octogenarian
handing this final volume to Eustochium, Paula's heiress and executrix, and thus
acquitting himself of what he considered the most sacred of obligations, is one
of the most touching spectacles in the history of letters and sanctity.
Shortly after seeing all of Paula's dreams
realized and her own as well, the gentle, ardent, gifted Eustochium, the first
of patrician maidens to make the vow of virginity, followed her mother to
another world. Jerome's only consolation after her death was the granddaughter
of Paula, who, some years previously, had come from Rome and who, like her aunt
and grandmother, had the ineffable happiness of studying Scripture under the
same master, who, thirty years before, had inaugurated a course of Bible study
in the
Ecclesia Domestica on the Aventine, and who had there, under the
inspiration of those who were nearest and dearest to her, as well as to him,
begun that brilliant career which issued in his being ranked among the most
eminent fathers and doctors of the Church.
Young Paula, who was now a maiden of twenty
years, and inheriting all the rare qualities of mind and heart, which so
distinguished the other members of her family, was the light and life of the
venerable and venerated patriarch during the year which he survived the death of
his devoted daughter in Christ, Eustochium. And when the end came, after his
long and faithful service in the cause of Biblical science, it was young Paula
who closed his eyes in death, and who had his precious remains laid away near
the grotto of the Nativity—not far from those of the two exalted souls
"in goodness and power pre-eminent"
—who, for more than a third of a century, had
watched over him with the most tender solicitude, and who by developing to the
utmost all the resources of his matchless intellect, had converted the retiring
and diffident monk of Chalcis into the brightest luminary in Christendom.
Jerome is usually characterized as a man of
exceedingly austere, almost savage, nature. He was indeed an implacable foe to
idleness, frivolity and luxury, but the foregoing pages regarding his relations
towards his friends and pupils in Rome and Bethlehem exhibit him in a different
light. He may not have been of the effusive and demonstrative disposition of his
illustrious friend and contemporary, St. Augustine, as portrayed in Ary
Scheffer's splendid painting of St. Monica and her son, but he was nevertheless
a man of a deeply affectionate nature, of rare generosity and nobility of soul,
and, above all, a man of unswerving loyalty to his friends.
No man, probably, was ever so completely under
the sublime inspiration of the "eternal womanly" as was this exemplar of penance
and mortification. From the time he came under the potent influence of Marcella
and her gifted friends in the convent on the Aventine, until he gave young Paula
her last lesson in Scripture, it was this inspiring force that kept him on the
highest plane of intellectual effort. We admire "the eternal womanly" in St.
Hilda, who unsealed the lips of Caedmon and made him the first of English bards;
we admire it in Vittoria Colonna, who stimulated Michelangelo in his sublimest
conceptions; we admire it in St. Clare, who sustained St. Francis, the
poverello of Assisi, in his great, world-embracing work of charity and
reform; we admire it in Aspasia, who was the inspiration of the most brilliant
geniuses of Attica in the golden age of Greece; we admire it in Beatrice, the
sovereign influence in the production of Dante's immortal
Divina Commedia, but in none of these inspirers of great things do we
find that long-continued, ever-present, all-dominating, supremely effective
power of the "eternal womanly" that so distinguished Paula and Eustochium, and
which has forever identified them with Jerome's masterpiece, the Vulgate.
Dante, at the conclusion of his New Life, in
referring to his great work—the Divina Commedia, which he then had in
contemplation—writes concerning Beatrice, the lady of his heart, "I hope to say
of her what was never said of any woman." Jerome, in addressing his last
farewell to Paula, in his famous funeral eulogy, expresses himself to the same
effect, but in a different manner. In words broken by sobs and tears, the
grief-stricken old man exclaims, "Vale, O Paula, Adieu, Paula—sustain by
thy prayers the declining years of him who has held thee in such veneration and
affection. Thy faith and thy works unite thee to Christ. In His presence thy
petitions will readily be granted." Then, recalling his life-work, a work which
he is always pleased to regard as her work, as well as his own, he is comforted
in his deep affliction, for he feels that her memory will endure as long as men
shall be moved by the deeds of heroic lives or stirred by the records of
pre-eminent merit and achievement. And giving a beautiful turn to a well-known
sentiment of Horace and Ovid, he rejoices even in his sorrow, for he can say in
the language of solemn prophecy, "Exegi monumentum tuum aere perennius, quod
nulla destruere possit vetustas—I have raised to thee a monument more
durable than bronze, which time shall never destroy."
What a wonderful prophecy, and what a marvellous
fulfillment of it has been witnessed during the ages, which have elapsed since
these words were pronounced! Paula's monument was Jerome's life-work—his
letters, his doctrinal treatises, his commentaries, but above all, his Latin
version of the Hebrew Scriptures—the Vulgate. And what a unique monument it is!
All the Anglo-Saxon translations, not to speak of
others, were made from it, as was also the English version of Wyklif, while its
influence in Tyndale's and subsequent English versions was most profound. It was
the first book to come from the press of Gutenberg, a copy of which Bible is the
most prized volume in the world today. But a still more signal honor awaited it,
for it was decreed by the Council of Trent, that "the old and Vulgate edition,"
approved "by the usage of so many ages," should be the only Latin version used
in "public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions." And so far-reaching
has been its influence through the centuries that the religious terminology of
the languages of Western Europe has in great part been derived from or colored
by the Vulgate.
Nor is this all. As is well known, most of the
modern languages of Europe have been formed under the influence of, and as the
result of the fecundity of, the ancient Latin. But the Latin from which these
languages have been fashioned was not the language of Cicero, or of Virgil,
popular as he was during the Middle Ages, but the language of the Church and of
the Bible—the language of the Vulgate—which was created by Jerome acting under
the inspiration of Paula. It is the Vulgate, which was the first book of which
the nascent languages of medieval times essayed a translation, the first book of
which an attempt at translation was made in the French of the twelfth century,
and in the German of the eighth century. It is the Vulgate, with its admirable
narratives, with the fascinating simplicity of Genesis, with its charming
pictures of the infancy of the human race that supplied the needed language in
which to address the barbarians from the North, when they first came under the
beneficent influence of Christian civilization.
Our fathers were wont to cover the Vulgate with
gold and precious stones. And they did more. When a council was assembled, the
Sacred Scriptures—that is the Vulgate—were placed upon the altar in the midst of
the assembly which it, in a certain sense, dominated, while, on the occasions of
great and imposing outdoor processions, the Bible was carried in triumph in a
golden reliquary.
Our ancestors had good reasons to carry the
Vulgate in triumph and covered with gold. For this first of ancient books, is,
as Ozanam truly observes, also the first of modern books. It is, as it were, the
source of modern books, because from its pages have sprung all the languages,
all the eloquence, all the civilization of the later centuries.
St. Jerome was right. The monument he erected to
Paula, or rather to Paula and Eustochium—for mother and daughter may not be
separated—is imperishable. And the glory of their work, far from diminishing
with the passing ages, becomes, on the contrary, greater as the world grows
older and wiser. Who, then, that has read the story of the labors of the
Dalmatian monk, and of the heiresses of the Scipios and the Gracchi, can any
longer question the supreme importance of woman's influence in every sphere of
human endeavor, or seriously contend that inspiration, of the kind noted in the
preceding pages, is of lesser moment than execution? And who can fail to see
that Goethe expressed a profound and beautiful truth when, in the closing verses
of Faust, he declared it is "The eternal womanly that leads us on"—
Das Ewig-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan?
Source:
- PetersNet.net - "Woman's Work in Bible Study
and Translations", from A.H. Johns, A.M.,
The Catholic World, The Catholic World (July 1912), "The Story of St.
Jerome, St. Marcella, St. Paula and St. Eustochium and the Latin Vulgate",
p. 463-477. Copyright 2002 Trinity Communications -
http://www.petersnet.net/research/retrieve.cfm?RecNum=2945.
|