Jerome responds to the treatise of the Gallic cleric Vigilantius, written and distributed in Gaul in the early 400s, which attacked some new religious practices, including the cult of relics. Jerome defends them all, justifies the cult of relics, and lists examples of their veneration. Against Vigilantius, written in Latin in Bethlehem (Palestine) in 406. Overview entry
E08325
Literary - Theological works
Jerome of Stridon
Jerome of Stridon, Against Vigilantius (Contra Vigilantium)
1. Jerome mocks Vigilantius (the Wakeful) and his ill-chosen name, calling him Dormitantius (the Sleeper) and an innkeeper, and considers him inspired by the devil. He briefly summarises Vigilantius’ views. According to him, Vigilantius disregards virginity and continence, rejects fasting, condemns singing Alleluia in any other period than Easter, and attacks the apostles and martyrs.
2. He also criticises the celibacy of the clergy.
3. Jerome attacks Vigilantius personally, attributing to him drunkenness, barbarian style, and ignorance.
4. He claims that Vigilantius criticises the custom of carrying around, kissing, and adoring the ashes of martyrs, and lighting lights in their honour. See E08339.
5. According to Jerome, Vigilantius must be mad if he thinks that Christians adore martyrs. Christians are not idolaters. The emperor Constantius who transferred the relics of *Andrew, *Luke, and *Timothy to Constantinople and the emperor Arcadius who brought there the relics of *Samuel did not act sacrilegiously. Neither did those who greeted these relics during their transfer. See E08340.
6. All these people are right, as they do not venerate dead bodies but the saints who are alive, for God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
7. Nor is lighting tapers an idolatrous practice. They are a sign of joy, frequently referred to in the Bible. See E08341.
8. The bishop of Rome who offers sacrifices over the venerable bones of the Apostles Peter* and Paul* cannot be wrong. Vigilantius sneers that perhaps the souls of the martyrs hover over their graves, afraid not to miss any worshipper. He resembles the heretic Eunomius whose followers do not enter the basilicas of the martyrs but worship him, as also other heretics venerate Montanus or Mani. See E08342.
9. Vigilantius argues that young people and women behave inappropriately during the feasts of martyrs. This is true, but such things also happen at Easter, and it would be absurd to abandon the celebration of this feast.
10. Vigilantius claims that the miracles which occur at the basilicas of the martyrs are useless for the believers. He follows the heretics and pagans who claimed that the possession of the demoniacs healed at the tombs and shrines of martyrs had been feigned. See E08346.
11. Jerome recalls that once, when Vigilantius stayed with him in Bethlehem, he ran out of the house naked, causing the embarrassment of the brethren.
12. Jerome claims that when he feels anger, he does not dare to enter the basilicas of the martyrs. Vigilantius may mock it and call it womanly superstition, but Jerome prefers to fast with pious women than drink and belch with men. Vigilantius opposes sobriety and continence because he fears his tavern business will not pay.
13. He also condemns sending money to support monastic communities in Jerusalem, thus obviously opposing Paul the Apostle who recommended this custom.
14. And also opposing Christ who taught that we should give money to the poor and needy.
15. Also, Vigilantius’ arguments against monastic life do not make any sense and only reveal his stupidity.
16. The monastic life which Jerome conducts does indeed consist in running away from temptation, but it is much better to flee than fall.
17. If Vigilantius attacks Jerome, he will respond to him and his companions with a treatise larger than the present one.
Text: Feiertag 2005.
Summary: Robert Wiśniewski.
Eucharist associated with cult
FestivalsSaint’s feast
Cult PlacesAltar
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Cult building - independent (church)
Rejection, Condemnation, SceptisismRejection of the cult of relics
Scepticism/rejection of miracles
Non Liturgical ActivityVisiting graves and shrines
MiraclesMiracle after death
Exorcism
RelicsTransfer, translation and deposition of relics
Touching and kissing relics
Reliquary – institutionally owned
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Transfer/presence of relics from distant countries
Bodily relic - corporeal ashes/dust
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Ecclesiastics - Popes
Pagans
Heretics
Monarchs and their family
Cult Related ObjectsPrecious cloths
Oil lamps/candles
Theorising on SanctityConsiderations about the nature of relics
Considerations about the veneration of saints
Relationships with pagan practices
Source
Jerome’s treatise Against Vigilantius is one of the earliest testimonies to an open polemic on the cult of relics within Christianity. When writing it, Jerome was already a famous biblical scholar and redoubtable polemicist. Vigilantius may have been a minor personage in the history of late antique literature, but he was well connected with a few authors and clerics who played an essential role in the development of the cult of saints in the West.We meet Vigilantius for the first time in 395, when he arrived at Jerome's monastery in Bethlehem with a letter of recommendation from Paulinus of Nola. He spent there less time than his host had expected (Jerome, Letter 58.11) and parted company with him over a disagreement whose details are uncertain, but nothing suggests that it concerned his attitude toward the veneration of relics.
Soon after his return to Italy, Vigilantius set off again, this time carrying a letter of Paulinus to Gaul, to Sulpicius Severus (Paulinus, Letter 5, E05092). He reached his destination in 396, most probably the same year in which Victricius of Rouen wrote In Praise of the Saints (E00717) and Sulpicius Severus the Life of St Martin (E00692), two manifestos of a new, ascetic religiosity, hostile to the clerical establishment. It is highly probable that the publication of these texts and bad memories of his stay with Jerome, one of the most zealous promoters of virginity and the monastic life, then conflict with his bishop, and finally a visit to Sulpicius Severus, who also was in conflict with several Gallic bishops, made Vigilantius speak out against the views and practices of the milieu which he had hitherto belonged to.
However, these are only conjectures. For after his return to Gaul, Vigilantius disappears from our sources for a few years. We next find him living in Calagurris in Gaul (today's Saint-Martory, and not Calagurris in the Iberian Peninsula), about 70 km south-west of Toulouse. We know this from Jerome’s Letter 109 (E08347), written in 404, to the priest Riparius of Toulouse, who reported to him Vigilantius' rejection of the cult of relics.
We do not know when exactly Vigilantius wrote his treatise criticising this phenomenon. Perhaps it was directly triggered by the solemn transfer of the body of the bishop and martyr Saturninus to the newly built church in Toulouse, in 402 or 403. But this connection could have worked in two ways. It is possible that Vigilantius reacted to an event that he had witnessed, but he also could have already begun to voice his criticisms earlier, thus making Bishop Exsuperius of Toulouse, the organiser of the ceremony, anxious of possible reactions: we know Exsuperius sought permission from the emperor to transfer Saturninus’ body and this caution may indicate that he had already encountered some criticism of the cult of relics, perhaps from Vigilantius (Hunter 1999, 408-9).
Be that as it may, the treatise in which Vigilantius set out his theses was written in 406 at the latest, because in this year Jerome, still living in Bethlehem, received it. The treatise has not survived and we know it only from the discussion and quotations in Jerome's pamphlet against it. According to Jerome, Vigilantius criticised several new religious customs: the promotion of virginity, especially among the clergy; the veneration of relics and the belief in miracles performed by them; night vigils and the singing of alleluias outside Easter; and the sending of financial aid to monasteries in the Holy Land. These practices developed partly independently, but were all popular in the same milieu that Jerome, Paulinus of Nola, and Sulpicius Severus belonged to.
Vigilantius argued that the custom of kissing relics, enclosing them in precious vessels and ceremoniously carrying them from one place to another are forms of idolatry, consisting in the worship of material objects. He believed that the martyrs, whose sanctity he acknowledged, lived with God in heaven, and had no link whatsoever with their mortal remains. In Letter 109, Jerome also reproached Vigilantius for considering the remains of the saints to be impure. In the Against Vigilantius, written two years later, however, this topic does not feature at all. This suggests that in 404 Jerome wrongly attributed to Vigilantius the same views which were characteristic of pagan criticism of the cult of relics. When he finally received Vigilantius' treatise, however, he found no such views in it.
We do not know what reactions Jerome's treatise provoked among his contemporaries. After 406 Vigilantius disappears from our sources and this stage of the public discussion of relics died out. It is doubtful that his supporters (Jerome writes that he had them even among the bishops) would have been persuaded by the treatise sent from Bethlehem, but it seems that neither its addressee nor anyone else dared to take up the challenge formulated in the last sentences of Jerome's polemic: ‘But if Dormitantius [=Vigilantius] wakes up that he may again abuse me, and if he thinks fit to disparage me with that same blasphemous mouth with which he pulls to pieces Apostles and martyrs, I will spend upon him something more than this short lucubration. I will keep vigil for a whole night in his behalf and in behalf of his companions, whether they be disciples or masters…’ (Against Vigilantius 17).
Bibliography
Edition:Feiertag, J.-L., Adversus Vigilantium (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 79C; Turnhout: Brepols, 2005).
Translation:
Fremantle, W.H., Against Vigilantius, in: The Principal Works of St. Jerome, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 6 (Buffalo, NY, 1893).
Further reading:
Hunter, D.G., "Vigilantius of Calagurris and Victricius of Rouen: Ascetics, Relics, and Clerics in Late Roman Gaul," Journal of Early Christian Studies 7 (1999), 401–430.
Wiśniewski, R., The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
Robert Wiśniewski
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00008 | Paul, the Apostle | Certain | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | Certain | S00288 | Andrew, the Apostle | Certain | S00442 | Luke, the Evangelist | Certain | S00466 | Timothy, the disciple of Paul the Apostle | Certain | S01429 | Samuel, Old Testament prophet | Certain |
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