The fourth century was an epoch of war, and of the worst kind there is: that which unfolds in times of peace. The persecution of the Christians by Roman paganism had ceased with the imperial edicts granting freedom to the Church. But then arose the threat of threats, crueller than fire, fetters, or beast: the threat of apparent security.
With it, a new danger arose for Christians. To be a member of the Church, which in the past had been considered so ignominious, became a source of prestige. Now, not only heroes willing to shed their blood for their Lord would enlist in Jesus’ legions, but also opportunists eager to gain some of the world’s filthy and deceitful caresses.
The worldly entered, and with them, the world’s ideas. A host of new and heterodox doctrines began to ferment among the baptized.
Jerome and Helvidius
It was during this period that St. Jerome lived or – to be faithful to historical truth – fought.
After his passage through the desert of Chalcis in the Near East and his priestly ordination in Antioch, Eusebius Jerome arrived in Rome, where Pope St. Damasus appointed him as his secretary, as seen in the previous article.
Along with the numerous tasks he was to perform at the request of the Roman Pontiff, the writings of a certain Helvidius, who argued that Our Lady’s virginity was not perpetual, came to his attention. Using passages from Sacred Scripture taken out of context, Helvidius shamelessly asserted that, after the virginal birth of the God-Man, the Blessed Virgin had given birth to other children according to the flesh.
Faced with such an affront, many Christians urged St. Jerome, already a renowned exegete and champion against heresies, to destroy the arguments of that perverse author.
A piercing silence and explosive destruction
The rebuttal, however, was not immediate. Silence often wounds more than words, as St. Jerome penned with the power of his steel plume: “I was requested by certain of the brethren not long ago to reply to a pamphlet written by one Helvidius. I have deferred doing so, not because it is a difficult matter to maintain the truth and refute an ignorant boor who has scarce known the first glimmer of learning, but because I was afraid my reply might make him appear worth defeating.”1
When the refutation finally struck, not a stone was left standing of that fragile blasphemous edifice, so that “he who has never learned to speak may at length learn to hold his tongue.”2
Thus was introduced the work On the Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary, the first of the patristic treatises dedicated to Our Lady.
The Firstborn was also the Only-begotten
In this treatise we encounter, firstly, a summary of Helvidius’ ideas. In his concern for the times to come, St. Jerome described and denounced them fully for posterity.
As mentioned above, the heretic – like the good heretic that he was – used several passages from the Bible. The Gospel says that Christ Jesus is the Firstborn of the Blessed Virgin (cf. Lk 2:7). This would be, in Helvidius’ almost infantile declaration, a clear allusion to other future children of Mary, because otherwise, the Evangelist would have used the word only-begotten – the only son – instead of firstborn – the first.
St. Jerome3 leaps into the fray with the weight of his invincible biblical erudition. Every only-begotten is also a firstborn, although not every firstborn is an only-begotten, since “firstborn” means not only the son followed by others, but also the one without a predecessor. Accordingly, in the Holy Scriptures, the word firstborn is used to refer to both the first and the only son, as in the passage where God commands the redemption of the firstborn male children (cf. Ex 34:20). How could parents redeem their firstborn sons, since they did not yet know whether they would have any more? Perhaps it would be difficult – the Stridonian would conclude with devastatingly ironic logic – to ascertain this within the thirty-three or sixty-six days allotted for the said offering…
The Lord’s brothers
Another passage used by Helvidius to lend weight to his feeble theory is the one in which is said to the Lord: “Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see You” (Lk 8:20). For the heretic, this is another reference to the other sons of Jesus’ Mother.
“To this very thing, we reply, do not go about inventing lies.”4 This recommendation of Jerome constitutes the introduction and key to the development of his rebuke. Continuing his explanation, the Saint further clarifies that the term brother has several connotations in Sacred Scripture. The first – and apparently the only one that reached Helvidius – is that of blood brother. But would Our Lord, on Calvary, have left His Mother in the care of St. John (cf. Jn 19:26) if He had other brothers?
The second way of using the word “brother” is in reference to lineage. In this sense, all Jews are brothers because they have the same ancestry in common, as we can observe in several passages (cf. Dt 15:12; 17:14-15; Rom 9:3), but this does not make them all natural children of Mary Immaculate.
Brotherhood can also be defined by ties of affection. And in this sense, we are all children of this Virgin Mother who begot “the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom 8:29).
There is, however, a final interpretation of the term “brother”; that which alludes to a certain degree of kinship. Abraham, for example, called Lot his brother, even though he was his uncle (cf. Gn 13:8). Thus, those “brothers” of the Lord could indeed be His relatives, but not to the degree that Helvidius maliciously claimed against the evidence of so many other biblical passages.
The Lion of Judah and of Bethlehem
The Virgin’s defender attacked not only the blasphemy, but also the blasphemer, demolishing the edifice by routing the constructor
The invective of the Virgin’s defender was not only against the blasphemy, but also the blasphemer, aware that by demolishing the constructor, he undermined the whole construction. And this in thundering terms: “There are things which, in your extreme ignorance, you had never read, and therefore you neglected the whole range of Scripture and employed your madness in outraging the Virgin, like the man […] that if he could not have fame for good deeds, all men should give him credit for bad ones.”5 The rumbling resounds louder still: “Who, before you appeared, was acquainted with this blasphemy? Who thought the theory worth twopence? You have gained your desire, and have become notorious for crime.”6
An ad hominem argument? Perhaps, but more: by eliminating the cause of so many evil effects, the profile of those who, brandishing half a page of Sacred Scripture, would insolently attack a thousand others was stigmatized for posterity. After St. Jerome, “Helvidius” might serve as the disparaging appellative for those who express their personal opinion, echoing the worldliness of their time, in opposition to centuries of Apostolic Tradition. The first Pope rightly warned: “No prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man” (2 Pt 1:20-21).
The forceful denunciation by the Lion of Bethlehem, as St. Jerome became known, may seem too fierce for ears accustomed to less categorical language… These we invite to consider the infinite variety and richness of Christ’s virtues reflected in the lives of the saints. Indeed, He not only preached the Beatitudes to the multitude, but He also rebuked the Pharisees; He not only laid His hands on children or touched lepers to cure them, but He also made a whip with which to expel the money changers from the Temple; He was the Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah.
The crystal and its wall
Finally, after refuting all the heretic’s sophisms and delivering a splendid eulogy on virginity – also defending that of St. Joseph7 – St. Jerome concludes by addressing Helvidius: “And because I think that, finding the truth too strong for you, you will turn to disparaging my life and abusing my character […], I shall anticipate you. I assure you that I shall regard your railing as a high distinction, since the same lips that assail me have disparaged Mary, and I, a servant of the Lord, am favoured with the same barking eloquence as His Mother.”8
These final words of the holy polemicist reveal the motivation of his rebuttal: his love of and devotion to the Blessed Virgin, for which he considered it an honour to be slandered by those who slandered the glorious Mother of God. Indeed, what flows from the entire treatise, a maiden voyage in the Marian seas, is a deep love of Our Lady. So deep that it combined incense with gunpowder, for indignation blazes forth from a heart afire with rapture and admiration.
The crystal of the perpetual virginity of Mary was upheld by the roaring of a lion, who built up an unshakable theological wall to defend it
With each paragraph, this wondrous crystal, delicate and sublime, through which the Sun of Justice shone forth to the world intact, without in the least diminishing purity of its pulchritude, is defended by the roaring of a lion. He was the first to uphold the Virgin’s standard and defend her with an unshakable theological wall.
He was in fact the first of many, for over the centuries, so much light and chastity would glare in the tainted eyes of still others, who would in turn take aim at the same stained-glass window with stones taken from the same isolated biblical passages.
Yet, with each attack from hell, the wall would only grow higher, magnificently framing the purest crystal of God. ◊
Notes
1 ST. JEROME. De perpetua virginitate Beatæ Mariæ. Adversus Helvidium, n.1. In: Obras Completas. Madrid: BAC, 2009, v.VIII, p.67.
2 Idem, ibidem.
3 Cf. Idem, n.10, p.85-89.
4 Idem, n.12, p.91.
5 Idem, n.16, p.103
6 Idem, n.17, p.105.
7 “You say that Mary did not continue a virgin: I claim still more, that Joseph himself on account of Mary was a virgin, so that from a virgin wedlock a virgin Son was born” (Idem, n.19, p.109).
8 Idem, n.22, p.115.
