Letters on the Infancy Gospel and the Martyrology of the Saints

To the holy and most blessed lords, the bishops CHROMATIUS and HELIODORUS, JEROME, the least servant of Christ, greeting in the Lord.

He who digs earth known to contain gold does not immediately seize whatever the broken excavation pours forth, but before the shining weight of the swung iron's blow lifts it up, he lingers for a while in turning and lifting the clods, and especially he who is not yet enriched by the gains. An arduous task is laid upon me, since this has been commanded me by your beatitude, which not even the holy Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist himself, wished to be written openly. For if this were not a secret, he would certainly have added it to his own Gospel, which he published: but he made this little book sealed in Hebrew letters; and he published it to such a degree that the book written in Hebrew letters by his own hand is held by most religious men, who have also received it from their predecessors through the succession of times. But they never handed over this very book to be translated by anyone: they related its text differently at different times.

But it happened that this book, published by a disciple of Manichaeus named Seleucus, who also wrote in false speech the acts of the Apostles, offered material not for edification but for destruction; and it was proved in a synod to be such that the ears of the Church rightly should not be open to it. Let the bites of the barkers now cease: we have not added this little book to the canonical Scriptures, but we translate the writings of the apostle and evangelist in order to expose the deceit of heresy: in which work we do not so much obey the bishops who command piously, as we oppose the impious heretics. It is therefore the love of Christ that we satisfy, believing that they help us with their prayers, who through our obedience have been able to attain to the holy infancy of our Savior.

You ask me to write back to you what seems to me about a certain little book, which some hold to be about the nativity of holy Mary. And so I want you to know that many false things are found in it. For a certain Seleucus, who wrote the passions of the apostles, composed this little book. But just as, concerning their virtues and the miracles worked through them, he spoke the truth, while concerning their doctrine he lied a great deal; so also here he has fabricated from his own heart many things not true. Accordingly, as it is held in the Hebrew, I will take care to translate word for word. Indeed it is clear that the holy Evangelist Matthew composed this same little book, and placed it at the head of his Gospel, sealed in Hebrew letters: whether this is true, I leave to the author of the preface, and to the faithfulness of the writer. For as I declare these things to be doubtful, so I do not clearly affirm them to be false.

But this I say freely, which I think none of the faithful will deny, whether these things be true, or fabricated by someone, that great miracles preceded the most sacred nativity of holy Mary, and the greatest ones followed: and therefore, with faith preserved, it can, without danger to the soul, be believed and read by those who believe that God can do these things. Finally, as far as I can recall, following the sense rather than the words of the writer, and now going along the same path though not in the same footsteps, now returning to the same road by certain detours, I will attempt the style of the narration thus; and I will say nothing other than what is either written there, or could consequently have been written.

To the holy Father, Lord JEROME, CHROMATIUS and HELIODORUS, bishops, greeting in the Lord.

When the most religious Emperor Theodosius had entered the city of Milan, and had invited all the bishops of Italy to himself, and was inquiring concerning the matter of some bishops who had defiled their souls with the dregs of Arianism: it happened that our own smallness was also present at that same council. In which, when things had to be said and definitions settled, the most Christian Prince began to prefer, in that matter, St. Gregory, bishop of the Church of Cordoba, because every day, whether not fasting, in performing the morning Masses, or fasting, the evening ones, he would commemorate the names of very many of those martyrs whose feast days fell on that day.

And it came to pass that we all resolved to write to your charity, that, searching the archive of St. Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, for the most famous feast-days, you would send to us the feasts of the martyrs: so that we might be able, through your holy diligence, to perform this office better and more perfectly, to the honor of God, for the martyrs.

To CHROMATIUS and HELIODORUS, holy bishops, JEROME the presbyter.

It is agreed that our Lord Jesus Christ receives every day the triumphs of his martyrs, whose sufferings we have found written by the holy Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea. For when Constantine Augustus had entered Caesarea, and said to the aforementioned bishop that he should ask for some benefits that would be profitable to the Church of Caesarea, it is read that Eusebius replied: that the Church, enriched by its own resources, was compelled by no necessity to ask for benefits; yet that he had one unshaken desire, that whatever had been done in the Roman republic concerning the saints of God, the judges succeeding one another throughout the whole Roman world, with careful investigation, searching through the public records, should inquire; and that whichever martyr, by whichever judge, in whatever province or city, on what day, and with what perseverance in suffering, had obtained the palm, these things, taken from the archives themselves, should be sent by the judges to Eusebius himself by royal command.

Whence it came about that, being a suitable narrator, he both wove together an ecclesiastical history, and, as a diligent historiographer, set forth the trophies of nearly all the martyrs of all the Roman provinces: so that, offering sacrifice to God every day, they might remember their names: being zealous for those who, on that very day on which the sacrifice was offered, had proved victors over the devil, and, prevailing and exulting in the triumph of their martyrdom, had come to their King, Christ. For this reason we have written down the feasts of each month and of each day, as you bade us to do, believing this to be a perpetual memorial of our own smallness, since through all the days, over the space of so many years, the holy names of the Saints have been festively celebrated.

And since through each single day the names of more than eight or nine hundred martyrs of various provinces and various cities are named: so that there is no day which may not be found inscribed within the number of five hundred, excepting the day of the Kalends of January; considering that, amid the innumerable throngs, the mind of the reader might grow weary within a single month; lest this should happen, I have briefly and succinctly set down, in their proper places, only the names of those who are especially commemorated above all others in the most ample festivity, so that, with tedium cut away, a single little book inscribed may suffice for all. Indeed, in the first part of the book, we have written down the feasts of all the blessed Apostles, so that the various days may not seem to divide those whom the one dignity of the apostolate has made exalted in heavenly glory.