Site logo

The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity


from its origins to circa AD 700, across the entire Christian world


Jerome quotes passages attacking the cult of relics from a no-longer extant treatise by Vigilantius, written and distributed in Gaul in the early 400s. Against Vigilantius, written in Latin in Bethlehem (Palestine) in 406.

Evidence ID

E08339

Type of Evidence

Literary - Theological works

Major author/Major anonymous work

Jerome of Stridon

Jerome of Stridon, Against Vigilantius (Contra Vigilantium) 4


Before answering Vigilantius' criticism of the cult of relics, Jerome quotes passages from his lost treatise.


Quid necesse est tanto te honore non solum honorare, sed etiam adorare illud nescio quid quod in modico vasculo transferendo colis?

'What need is there for you not only to pay such honour, not to say adoration, to the thing, whatever it may be, which you carry about in a little vessel and worship?'
 
...

Quid pulverem linteamine circumdatum adorando oscularis?

'Why do you kiss and adore a bit of dust wrapped up in a cloth?'

...
 
Propre ritum gentilium videmus sub praetextu religionis introductum in ecclesiis: sole adhuc fulgente moles cereorum accendi, ut ubicumque pulvisculum nescio quod in modico vasculo pretioso linteamine circumdatum osculantes adorent.

'Under the cloak of religion we see what is all but a heathen ceremony introduced into the churches: while the sun is still shining, heaps of candles are lighted, and everywhere a paltry bit of dust, wrapped up in a costly cloth, is kissed and worshipped.'


...

Magnum honorem praebent huiusmodi homines martyribus, quos putant de vilissimis cereolis illustrandos, quos agnus, qui est in medio throni cum omni fulgore maiestatis suae illustrat.

'Great honour do men of this sort pay to the blessed martyrs, who, they think, are to be made glorious by the cheapest of candles, when the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne, with all the brightness of His majesty, gives them light?'


Text: Feiertag, 2005, pp. 10-11.
Translation: Fremantle, 1893, modified.
Summary: Robert Wiśniewski.

Rejection, Condemnation, Sceptisism

Rejection of the cult of relics

Relics

Bodily relic - corporeal ashes/dust
Reliquary – institutionally owned
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Touching and kissing relics

Cult Related Objects

Precious cloths
Oil lamps/candles

Theorising on Sanctity

Relationships with pagan practices
Considerations about the validity of cult forms

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).


Record Created By

Robert Wiśniewski

Date of Entry