Jerome, responding to a no-longer extant treatise by Vigilantius criticising the cult of relics, written and distributed in Gaul in the early 400s, makes a distinction between the veneration of saints and the adoration of God, and mentions the translation to Constantinople of the relics of *Andrew (the Apostle, S00288), *Luke (the Evangelist, S00442) and Timothy (the disciple of Paul, S00466) undertaken by the emperor Constantius II, and of *Samuel (Old Testament prophet, S01429) by the emperor Arcadius. Against Vigilantius, written in Latin in Bethlehem (Palestine) in 406.
E08340
Literary - Theological works
Jerome of Stridon
Jerome, Against Vigilantius (Contra Vigilantium) 5
According to Jerome, Vigilantius must be mad, if he thinks that Christians adore martyrs. Although martyrs are indeed better than those people who died long ago and whom pagans venerate as gods, Christians do not pay to them the honour which is due only to God.
Expone manifestius, ut tota libertate blasphemes, "pulvisculum”, inquit, “in modico vasculo pretioso linteamine circumdatum”. Dolet martyrum reliquias pretioso operiri uelamine et non uel pannis et cilicio colligari uel proici in sterquilinium ut solus Vigilantius ebrius et dormiens adoretur. Ergo sacrilegi sumus, quando apostolorum basilicas ingredimur? Sacrilegus fuit Constantius imperator, qui sanctas reliquias Andreae, Lucae et Timothei transtulit Constantinopolim, apud quas daemones rugiunt et habitatores Vigilantii illorum se sentire praesentiam confitentur? Sacrilegus dicendus est et nunc Augustus Arcadius, qui ossa beati Samuhelis longo post tempore de Iudaea transtulit Thraciam? Omnes episcopi non solum sacrilegi, sed et fatui iudicandi, qui rem uilissimam et cineres dissolutos in serico et uase aureo portauerunt? Stulti omnium ecclesiarum populi, qui occurrerunt sanctis reliquiis et tanta laetitia quasi praesentem uiuentem que cernerent susceperunt, ut de Palaestina usque Calcedonem iungerentur populorum examina et in Christi laudes una uoce sonarent?
'Tell us more clearly (that there may be no restraint on your blasphemy) what you mean by the phrase “a bit of dust wrapped up in a costly cloth in a tiny vessel”. It is nothing less than the relics of the martyrs which he is vexed to see covered with a costly veil, and not bound up with rags or hair-cloth, or thrown on the midden, so that Vigilantius alone in his drunken slumber may be worshipped. Are we, therefore guilty of sacrilege when we enter the basilicas of the Apostles? Was the Emperor Constantius guilty of sacrilege when he transferred the sacred relics of Andrew, Luke, and Timothy to Constantinople? In their presence the demons cry out, and the [unclean spirits] who dwell in Vigilantius confess that they feel the influence of the saints. And at the present day is the Emperor Arcadius guilty of sacrilege, who after so long a time has conveyed the bones of the blessed Samuel from Judea to Thrace? Are all the bishops to be considered not only sacrilegious, but silly into the bargain, because they carried that most worthless thing, dust and ashes, wrapped in silk in golden vessel? Are the people of all the Churches fools, because they went to meet the sacred relics, and welcomed them with as much joy as if they beheld a living prophet in the midst of them, so that there was one great swarm of people from Palestine to Chalcedon with one voice re-echoing the praises of Christ?’
Text: Feiertag, 2005, p. 12-3.
Translation: Fremantle, 1893, lightly modified.
Summary: Robert Wiśniewski.
Cult building - independent (church)
Rejection, Condemnation, SceptisismRejection of the cult of relics
MiraclesMiracle after death
Exorcism
RelicsBodily relic - unspecified
Transfer/presence of relics from distant countries
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Bodily relic - bones and teeth
Reliquary – institutionally owned
Bodily relic - corporeal ashes/dust
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesCrowds
Monarchs and their family
Ecclesiastics - bishops
Cult Related ObjectsPrecious cloths
Theorising on SanctityConsiderations 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).
Discussion
Jerome here, and in his Chronicle (E04569), is our earliest surviving source to record the translation of the bodies of Andrew, Luke and Timothy to Constantinople by the emperor Constantius II. There is some debate over whether these translations were actually effected by Constantine (Burgess 2003), but the majority of texts attribute them to Constantius (see also E04195 and E07986).Jerome also provides the earliest evidence for the translation of the body of the prophet Samuel to Constantinople. The Paschal Chronicle (E08340) dates this event to 406.
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:
Burgess, R., "The Passio S. Artemii, Philostorgius and the dates of the invention and translation of the relics of Sts Andrew and Luke," Analecta Bollandiana 121 (2003), 5-36.
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 | S00288 | Andrew, the Apostle | Andreas | Certain | S00442 | Luke, the Evangelist | Lucas | Certain | S00466 | Timothy, the disciple of Paul the Apostle | Timotheus | Certain | S01429 | Samuel, Old Testament prophet | Samuhel | Certain |
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