Jerome’s Prologue to the Book of Didymus on the Holy Spirit
Jerome’s Prologue to the Book of Didymus on the Holy Spirit
When I was staying in Babylon as a tenant of the harlot draped in purple, living according to the law of the Quirites, I got it in my mind to spout some nonsense about the Holy Spirit and dedicated a small work I had started to the Pontiff of the same city. Imagine my surprise when the pot facing away from the north that is seen in Jeremiah after the rod began to boil and the senate of the Pharisees shouted out together. Not a scribe nor even someone pretending to be one but rather everyone in that coalition of ignorance, as if a battle over doctrines had been declared, conspired against me. I returned to Jerusalem at once just as if I were going home after exile, and after having seen the hut of Romulus and the festive rite at the Lupercal, I gazed upon the inn where Mary stayed and the cave of the Savior. And so, Paulinian my brother, since the above-mentioned Pontiff Damasus who first urged me to undertake this work has already fallen asleep in the Lord, now at your insistence and with the help of your prayers as much as those of my dear Paula and Eustochium, those venerable handmaidens of Christ, here in Judaea I mumble the song I could not sing in a foreign land [Ps 136.4]. For I judge the place which gave birth to the Savior of the world [1 Jn 4.14] to be far more glorious than the place which spawned the one who murdered his brother.
By acknowledging the author of this book in the title, I confess that I have preferred to be the translator of another’s work rather than to do what certain men do, that is, to adorn a hideous little crow with colors from another. Not long ago I read a certain man’s little books on the Holy Spirit and I saw that what the Comic said was true: good Latin does not come from good Greek. The work was utterly devoid of logical structure, completely lacking the force and rigor that would draw the reader even unwillingly to agreement. Rather, everything was languid, weak, elegant, and refined, and adorned here and there with artificial colors.
But my dear Didymus, who has the eye of the bride in the Song of Songs and those lights which Jesus commanded be lifted up to the white harvests, gazed even higher and restored for us the ancient custom of calling a Prophet a “seer.” Whoever reads this will certainly recognize how the Latins have robbed him and will scorn the trickling stream once he begins to drink from the gushing spring. However unskilled in speaking he may be, he is not lacking in knowledge, for his very style shows that he is an apostolic man as much as by the authority of his thoughts as by the simplicity of his words.