Jerome, responding to a no-longer extant treatise by Vigilantius criticising the cult of relics, written and distributed in Gaul in the early 400s, argues that miracles are not useless, defends their veracity, and compares Vigilantius to the enemies of the faith: the pagan philosopher Porphyrius and the radical Arian Eunomius. Against Vigilantius, written in Latin in Bethlehem (Palestine) in 406.
E08346
Literary - Theological works
Jerome of Stridon
Jerome, Against Vigilantius (Contra Vigilantium) 10
Non possum uniuersa percurrere, quae sanctorum presbyterorum litterae comprehendunt. De libellis ipsius aliqua proferam. Argumentatur contra signa atque uirtutes quae in basilicis martyrum fiunt et dicit eas incredulis prodesse, non credentibus, quasi nunc hoc quaeratur, quibus fiant, et non qua uirtute fiant. Esto signa sint infidelium, qui quoniam sermoni et doctrinae credere noluerunt, signis adducantur ad fidem: et dominus incredulis signa faciebat, et tamen non idcirco domini suggillanda sunt signa, quia illi infideles erant, sed maiori admirationi erunt, quia tantae fuere potentiae, ut etiam mentes durissimas edomarent, et ad fidem cogerent. Itaque nolo mihi dicas signa infidelium sunt, sed responde quomodo in uilissimo puluere et fauilla nescio qua tanta sit signorum uirtutum que praesentia. Sentio, sentio, infelicissime mortalium, quid doleas, quid timeas. Spiritus iste immundus qui haec te cogit scribere saepe hoc uilissimo tortus est puluere, immo hodieque torquetur, et qui in te plagas dissimulat, in ceteris confitetur. Nisi forte in morem gentilium impiorum que Porphyrii et Eunomii has praestigias daemonum esse confingis et non uere clamare daemones, sed sua simulare tormenta.
10. I cannot traverse all the topics embraced in the letters of the reverend presbyters; I will adduce a few points from the tracts of Vigilantius. He argues against the signs and miracles (signa atque uirtutes) which are wrought in the basilicas of the martyrs, and says that they are of service to the unbelieving, not to believers, as though the question now were for whose advantage they occur, not by what power. Granted that signs belong to the faithless, who, because they would not obey the word and doctrine, are brought to believe by means of signs. Even our Lord wrought signs for the unbelieving, and yet our Lord's signs are not on that account to be impugned, because those people were faithless, but must be worthy of greater admiration because they were so powerful that they subdued even the hardest hearts, and compelled men to believe. And so I will not have you tell me that signs are for the unbelieving; but answer my question — how is it that poor worthless dust and ashes are associated with this wondrous power of signs and miracles? I see, I see, most unfortunate of mortals, why you are so sad and what causes your fear. That unclean spirit who forces you to write these things has often been tortured by this worthless dust, aye, and is being tortured at this moment, and though in your case he conceals his wounds, in others he makes confession. You will hardly follow the heathen and impious Porphyry and Eunomius, and pretend that these are the tricks of the demons, and that they do not really cry out, but feign their torments.
Vigilantius should go to a martyrial shrine, where hopefully he will be cleansed of the demon who speaks through him.
Text: Feiertag, 2005, p. 21-2.
Translation: Fremantle, 1893.
Rejection of the cult of relics
Scepticism/rejection of miracles
MiraclesMiracle after death
Exorcism
RelicsBodily relic - corporeal ashes/dust
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).