Jerome of Stridon, The Vigilantius Dossier

This volume brings together Jerome’s polemical writings against Vigilantius and presents them in accessible, annotated English translations: Against Vigilantius, Letter 61, and Letter 109.

When Jerome begins Against Vigilantius with the claim that "many monsters have been produced in the world," he casts the Gallic presbyter Vigilantius as an aberration who threatened cherished Christian practices. Vigilantius had challenged the theological legitimacy of celibacy, relic veneration, nocturnal vigils, and ascetic rigor, and he further provoked Jerome’s ire by accusing him of heresy. Their dispute, traceable from 395 to 406 CE, reveals a decade-long intellectual entanglement that illuminates key debates in the formative period of Western Christianity.

Through close engagement with Jerome’s quoted excerpts from Vigilantius’ now-lost "little pamphlet," this volume reconstructs the contours of a controversy that would shape later medieval doctrine and devotional culture. By presenting these texts together and situating them within their broader historical and literary contexts, the volume provides scholars and students of Late Antiquity with fresh insights into two influential yet deeply antagonistic figures whose disagreements anticipated enduring questions about authority, orthodoxy, and the boundaries of Christian practice.

The translations include marginal references to the critical editions of the Latin texts on which they are based (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, vol. 79C; Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 54 and 55). The volume offers an extensive introduction, clarifying notes accompanying the translations, as well as a commentary.

Chapter One: Introduction

1. The Life of Jerome
2. Jerome and the Origenist Controversy
3. The Life of Vigilantius
4. Previous Scholarship on Jerome and Vigilantius
5. Defense, then Offense: Jerome’s Generic Trajectory against Vigilantius

Chapter Two: Vigilantius’s Beliefs in Context

1. Anti-asceticism
2. Resurrection
3. Relics
4. Approaching Pagan Practices

Note on Texts and Translation

Translation

Letter 61 to Vigilantius
Letter 109 to Riparius
Against Vigilantius

Notes

Bibliography

Indices