One of the points which stagger modern Christians about St. Ambrose and St. Augustine is their enthusiastic and apparently genuine belief in saints’ relics. When St. Ambrose was asked to consecrate a new church, and he consented on condition that he should have some new relics to place therein, the relics were soon forthcoming. He professed that he was told in a dream where the relics of Gervasius and another saint were buried. The bodies were afterwards found in the spot indicated and placed in the new church. Ambrose delivered impassioned and fanciful harangues during the proceedings, claiming for these relics that they had expelled demons and restored sight to a blind butcher named Severus, who merely touched them. Mosheim, Gibbon, and Isaac Taylor treat all this as a mere trick or imposture. But others are not prepared to come to any decision, as next to nothing is known as to the circumstances under which all these events or apparent events happened. The expelling of demons may be explained by some hysterical excitement; and the blindness may have been something more or less temporary. Ambrose, however, apparently had the most unfeigned belief in the miracles, and he related the whole story to his sister Marcellina in a letter which does not savour of knavery. St. Augustine, at a later date, also related similar miracles worked by the same relics, which he vouches to be true.
ST. JEROME’S LIFE OF PAUL, THE FIRST HERMIT (A.D. 400).
St. Jerome, in his Life of Paul, the first hermit, says that Paul, when a boy, suspecting his life to be in danger, fled to the wilderness, and found a convenient great cave in which to live. “In this beloved dwelling,” says Jerome, “offered him as it were by God, Paul spent all his life in prayer and solitude, while the palm tree gave him food and clothes; as to which, lest it should seem impossible to some, I call Jesus and His holy angels to witness that I have seen monks, one of whom, shut up for thirty years, lived on barley bread and muddy water; another, in an old cistern, which in the country speech they call the Syrian’s bed, was kept alive on five figs each day. These things therefore will seem incredible to those who do not believe, for to those who do believe all things are possible.” St. Paul the hermit, in his one hundred and thirteenth year, was visited by Antony, who was ninety, Paul being in a dying state in a sequestered cell. Antony was sent on a message, and on his return Paul was found on his knees with hands uplifted as if in prayer, but was quite dead. Antony, according to previous instructions, wished to bury the saint, but had no spade, and sat down to consider how he was to proceed. Forthwith, as Jerome relates, two lions came running from the desert tossing their manes, fearless and innocent as doves. They went straight to the corpse, crouched, wagged their tails and roared, and then began to claw the ground and dig a deep place, large enough to hold a man. When they had finished they came to Antony, dropped their necks, and licked his hands and feet, as if praying for a blessing. Antony praised God, who taught the dumb animals, and without whose word not a leaf drops nor one sparrow falls to the ground; and then signing with his hand to the lions, they went away peaceably to the desert from which they came.
ST. JEROME’S REFLECTIONS ON PAUL THE HERMIT.
St. Jerome, after narrating the life and death of Paul, the first hermit, thus concludes: “I am inclined at the end of my treatise to ask those who know not the extent of their patrimonies, who cover their houses with marbles, who sew the price of whole farms into their garments with a single thread, What was ever wanting to this naked old man? Ye drink from a gem; he satisfied nature from the hollow of his hands. Ye weave gold into your tunics, he had not even the vilest garment of your bondslave. But, on the other hand, to that poor man Paradise is open; you, gilded as you are, Gehenna will receive. He, though naked, kept the garment of Christ; you, clothed in silk, have lost Christ’s robe. Paul lies covered with the meanest dust to rise in glory; you are crushed by wrought sepulchres of stone, to burn with all your works. Spare, I beseech you, yourselves; spare at least the riches which you love. Why do you wrap even your dead in golden vestments? Why does not ambition stop amid grief and tears? Cannot the corpses of the rich decay save in silk? I beseech thee, whosoever thou art that readest this, to remember Jerome the sinner, who, if the Lord gave him choice, would much sooner choose Paul’s tunic with his merits than the purple of kings with their punishments.”
ST. JEROME WITH THE LION AND THE ASS.
A legend of St. Jerome, who died 420, relates that one evening as he sat within the gates of his monastery at Bethlehem, a lion entered, limping as in pain, and all the brethren when they saw the beast fled in terror. But Jerome arose, and went forward to meet the lion as though it had been a guest. And the lion lifted up his paw, and Jerome, on examining it, found that it was wounded by a thorn, which he extracted; and he tended the lion till it was healed. The grateful beast remained with his benefactor, and Jerome confided to him the task of guarding the ass, which was employed in bringing firewood from the forest. On one occasion, the lion having gone to sleep while the ass was at pasture, some merchants passing by carried away the ass, and the lion, after searching for him in vain, returned to the monastery with drooping head as one ashamed. St. Jerome, believing that it had devoured its companion, commanded that the daily task of the ass should be laid upon the lion, and that the faggots should be bound on its back, to which it magnanimously submitted, until the ass should be recovered, which was in this wise. One day, the lion having finished its task, ran hither and thither, still seeking its companion, and it saw a caravan of merchants approaching, and a string of camels, which, according to the Arabian custom, was led by an ass. And when the lion recognised its friend it drove the camels into the convent, and so terrified the merchants that they confessed the theft and received pardon from St. Jerome. Hence the lion is often introduced into the pictures of St. Jerome.
THE DEATHBED OF ST. JEROME.
The ancient biographer Peter de Natalibus thus describes the last hours of Jerome: As Jerome’s death drew near, he commanded that he should be laid on the bare ground and covered with sackcloth, and calling the brethren around him, he spoke sweetly to them, and exhorted them in many holy words, and with tears received the blessed Eucharist. And sinking backwards again on the earth, his hands crossed on his heart, he sang the Nunc Dimittis, which being finished, suddenly a great light as of the noonday sun shone round about him, within which light angels innumerable were seen by the bystanders in shifting motion. And the voice of the Saviour was heard inviting him to heaven, and the holy doctor answered that he was ready. And after an hour that light departed, and Jerome’s spirit with it. And at that very hour Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, was sitting in his cell meditating a treatise on the beatific vision, and had begun an epistle to Jerome, consulting him on that mystery, when an ineffable light with a fragrant odour filled his cell, and a voice came to him therefrom, reproving him of presumption for deeming that, while yet in the flesh, he could comprehend the eternal beatitude. And Augustine demanding who spoke to him, the voice answered, “Jerome’s soul, to whom thou writest, for I am this very hour loosed from the flesh, and on my way to heaven.” And after Augustine had asked him many questions concerning the joys of heaven, the angelic nature, and the Blessed Trinity, and Jerome had answered thereto, the light and the voice departed.
ST. JEROME’S EPISTLES.