Paula Before the Cross she threw herself down in adoration as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it: and when she entered the tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre. Indeed so ardent was her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lord’s body had […]
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Jerome on Translation
Cicero on Translating Demosthenes [Tully,] who has translated the Protagoras of Plato, the Œconomicus of Xenophon, and the two beautiful orations which Æschines and Demosthenes delivered one against the other … has spoken as follows in a prologue prefixed to the orations. ”I have thought it right to embrace a labour which though not necessary for myself will prove useful to those who study. I have translated the noblest speeches […]
Read moreJerome On the Art of Rhetoric
Rhetoric in Classical Writers Read, I beg of you, Demosthenes or Cicero, or (if you do not care for pleaders whose aim is to speak plausibly rather than truly) read Plato, Theophrastus, Xenophon, Aristotle, and the rest of those who draw their respective rills of wisdom from the Socratic fountain-head. Do they show any openness? Are they devoid of artifice? Is not every word they say filled with meaning? And […]
Read moreJerome On Origen (Part I)
Origen’s Prolificity Antiquity marvels at Marcus Terentius Varro, because of the countless books which he wrote for Latin readers; and Greek writers are extravagant in their praise of their man of brass [Didymus], because he has written more works than one of us could so much as copy. … Our Christian man of brass, or, rather, man of adamant—Origen, I mean—whose zeal for the study of Scripture has fairly earned […]
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Jerome: The Letters of St. Jerome
The Indignity of Non-Fellowship Pardon, I beseech you, an aggrieved man: if I speak in tears and in anger it is because I have been injured. For in return for my regular letters you have not sent me a single syllable. Light, I know, has no communion with darkness, and God’s handmaidens no fellowship with a sinner, yet a harlot was allowed to wash the Lord’s feet with her tears, […]
Read moreJohn of Damascus: Exposition of the Orthodox Faith III
On the Dual Natures of Christ In the case of … our Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that there are two natures, one divine and one human, joined together with one another and united in subsistence, so that one compound subsistence is formed out of the two natures: but we hold that the two natures are still preserved, even after the union, in the one compound subsistence, that is, in […]
Read moreJohn of Damascus: Exposition of the Orthodox Faith II
On Paradise For our Creator, God, did not intend us to be burdened with care and troubled about many things, nor to take thought about, or make provision for, our own life. But this at length was Adam’s fate: for he tasted and knew that he was naked and made a girdle round about him: for he took fig-leaves and girded himself about. But before they took of the fruit, […]
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