Article
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In times of a threatened Catholicism: religious restraints and definitions in the modern Era, under the purple of Cardinals
Maria Leonor García da CRUZ
Original title: Em tempos de um catolicismo ameaçado: prevenções e definições confessionais na época moderna sob a cor púrpura cardinalícia
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Catholic Church, Gentiles, Mass of Hypocrites, Protestants, States.
For a deeper understanding of issues related to Catholicism and threats to it in the 16th century, the temporal and spatial spectrum must be increased, given that it is a time of great knowledge of non-European peoples and of interaction with different religious professions in Christian Europe itself. One, therefore, must reflect on the external threats and the internal crises of a “Christianity” that had been in collapse since the late Middle Ages (according to mediaeval imagery), on the restraints that States put on the Church and the religious communities that develop alongside the Church and on the strategies that the bodies of the Catholic Church find to constantly adapt to stimuli and tensions. Within the scope of the environment of disturbances produced in modern Europe from the very often blood-red clashes of different religious professions, analyses and comments have been made on a Protestant image that was confiscated in the 1560s from a New Christian merchant in Rua Nova dos Mercadores, resulting in his arrest and prosecution by the Lisbon Inquisition. The direct attack on the Papacy and the Church is clearly shown in pictorial terms, transparent in its symbolism around mass, whose officiants are foxes (enhancement of their colour, similar to that of the high dignitaries of the Church), illustrated in both the text of that image and in its discursive elements. But Catholicism clandestinely or openly adapted in a dynamic manner in both Europe and overseas territories. In particular, in Portuguese America, invasive multiculturality appears to constitute a true threat vis-à-vis catechetical programmes and cultural syncretisms. The article is therefore a summary of threats, resistances and adaptations, subdivided into four modules: the first addressing the external threats and internal crises in Catholic Europe, the second the vicissitudes and restraints, the third a pictorial testimonial of the attacks against the Papacy and the fourth addresses catechetical programmes and multicultural syncretisms.
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Hieronymus classicus et christianus. The Defense of the Classics as a means for Christian Authors
José Manuel MARTÍNEZ SÁNCHEZ
Original title: Hieronymus classicus et christianus. La defensa de los clásicos como medio para los autores cristianos
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Christian education, Christian literature, Jerome – Classical tradition – Greek literature, Latin literature.
In a time of changes of paradigm between the Roman world that approached its end and the new political, social and cultural situation of Christianity, saint Jerome repre-sents the example of christian writers and philosophers who try to bring both worlds together. With a great classical education from the imperial educational system, due to the fact that a specific christian educational system had not been yet developed, saint Jerome struggles between the benefits of such propedeutic education and the spiritual need of focusing in theological literature.
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The Chronicle of Eusebius of Cesarea and the Translation (and continuation) of Saint Jerome
Manuel Andrés SEOANE RODRÍGUEZ
Original title: La Crónica de Eusebio de Cesarea y la traducción (y continuación) de san Jerónimo
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Chronology, Eusebius of Caesarea, Saint Jerome, Translation.
At first, the apologetic intention of inserting chronological studies in the works of authors of Greek and Jewish antiquity was clear, since the assessment of their claims depended largely on their antiquity. With the triumph of Christianity over paganism, chronologies end up emancipating themselves from other treatises, no longer apologetic (less necessary), but even historiographical in nature, until they become autonomous works that confirm the fullness of historical time with the coming of Christ to the world. In this paper we analyze the literary antecedents of the chronologies prior to Eusebius of Cesarea, the characteristics that his Chronicle might have, and the peculiarities of the translation and extension of Saint Jerome, who launched this historiographic subgenre up to the Middle Ages and beyond.
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Jerome as Bible translator: hebraica veritas vs. graeca veritas
Eusebio GONZÁLEZ MARTÍNEZ
Original title: Jerónimo, traductor de la Biblia: hebraica veritas vs. graeca veritas
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Hebraica veritas, Jerome, Septuagint.
Among modern scholars Jerome is specially recognised as having rescued the Hebrew language as the main source for Bible studies, both on matters of translation and of interpretation. It is said, besides, that Jerome’s Hebrew methodology might be summarized under the famous phrase hebraica veritas, which he himself used quite frequently. The paper attempts to explain, beginning with a study of the expresion hebraica veritas, that putting too much weight on this expression and the hermeneutical principle involved, could bring us to forget the esteem Jerome had for the Septuagint. To bring forward the discussion the paper evaluates four aspects of Jerome’s exegesis: 1) the priority of the Hebrew original text; 2) the priority of the sense over the letter in translation; 3) the priority of the spiritual interpretation over the litteral one; and, 4) the translation of both Hebrew and Greek texts as lemmas in Jerome’s commentaries.
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The Controversy about the Translation of Origen of Alexandria
Anselmo MATILLA
Original title: La controversia en torno a la traducción de Orígenes de Alejandría
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Antiorigenism, Heterodoxy, Interpretation, Origenism, Philology, Theology.
In Church’s history, the 4th and 5th Centuries A. D. are characterized by the for or against theological thoughts associated with Origen of Alexandria. Two of the prota-gonists in relation to this argument are saint Jerome and Rufin of Aquileya, each of whom will translate the Περὶ ’Αρχῶν. Both translations will be an object of huge con-troversy between them. This article addresses the different ways in which both authors translate that origenean work from the saint Jerome’s apologetic treatise against Rufin of Aquileya (Adversus Rufinum).
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Jerome at the Light of his Epistolary: The use of Written Oratory for the conformation of his personality
María Teresa MUÑOZ GARCIA DE ITURROSPE
Original title: Jerónimo a la luz de su Epistolario: el uso de la oratoria escrita para la conformación de su personaje
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Letters, Saint Hieronymus, Self-representation, Written Oratory.
A careful reading of the epistolary confirms that in his most “personal” texts Hieronymus of Strido follows, with Paul as a model, the guidelines of the epideictic genre (and sometimes also the judicial one). Self-praise and humiliation, self-defense and confession are completed with isolated data on his origin, age, studies and physical appearance. All these elements − which in the classic prescriptive were applied to the speaker and which he adapts to impose a powerful self-portrait as a Christian intellectual − can help to explain how he managed to promote himself to be distinguished in the Christian community through the spread of his collection of letters.
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The Reception of the Gospel of Mark from St. Jerome to Erasmus
Ana RODRÍGUEZ LAIZ
Original title: La recepción del Evangelio de Marcos desde Jerónimo hasta Erasmo
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Erasmo, Gospel of Mark, Patristic Literature, Saint Jerome.
The reception of the Gospel of Mark throughout history has been paradoxical. Its early connection to the figure of Peter and to Rome was not enough for it to occupy a prom-inent place in patristic and medieval times. Studies and comments on this work from St. Jerome to Erasmus are scarce but significant. On the other hand, in the reception of the Gospel of Mark during this period, the figure of St. Jerome will have great im-portance. He is not only one of the few Fathers of the Church who paid attention to this Gospel, but, in addition, studies after him will be diffused associated with his name.
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Saint Jerome in Spain in the 16th Century
Pauline RENOUX-CARON
Original title: San Jerónimo en España en el siglo XVI
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Biblical Philology, Christian Humanism, José de Sigüenza, Order of Saint Jerome, Saint Jerome.
A Doctor of the Church and a polyglot philologist, Saint Jerome influenced generations of Spanish men of letters and men of the Church and was a central figure of 16th centu-ry humanism. Many studies have focused on the numerous representations of the Saint in Spanish art, but little has been written about the texts that testify to the importance of Saint Jerome in 16th century Spain. Saint Jerome can be defined in various ways: as an observant monk, he was chosen by the monastic Order of the Hieronymites as their patron; he was also considered as the spokesman of Erasmus’s humanism; as a Chris-tian Hebrew scholar, he interested Spanish Bible scholars; as a man of the Church, he was frequently quoted in arguments and debates over the ideas of the Counter-Reformation. Once his Latin Vulgate was declared to be ‘authentic’ at the Council of Trente, he appeared as the defender of the Roman church. A Hebrew scholar and a Bible translator, the Doctor Maximus was both from East and West, and his influence never was greater than in the late 16th century, a time of controversies between the ad-vocates of biblical philology and the partisans of the Vulgate in a climate of anti-Judaism. Saint Jerome thus appears as a great and multifaceted figure, who demon-strates the intensity of the spiritual and intelectual life in 16th century Spain.
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Erasmus editor of Saint Jerome: the Opera omnia (1516)
Inmaculada DELGADO JARA
Original title: Erasmo editor de san Jerónimo: las Opera omnia (1516)
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Erasmus, Fathers of the Church, Humanism, Saint Jerome.
The biblical and patristic project of Erasmus began in 1516, after a long maturation period of at least 15 years (from 1500 to 1516), with the publication in that annus mi-rabilis of the Novum Instrumentum and the Opera omnia of Saint Jerome –two milestones in his biblical and patristic project that will continue for twenty years with the edition of more than a dozen Fathers of the Church, both Greek and Latin–. At this time he had already discovered that the Sacred Scripture and the Fathers of the Church (espe-cially Saint Augustine, Chrysostom, Basil, Origen and Saint Jerome) could renew what he understood by theology: he does not want a scotist, nominalist, thomisttheology, that is, that of the recentiores, but a true theology, the vetus theologia or later the bibli-cal philosophia Christi, centered on the gospels and apostolic letters. But to reach this, we not only have the texts of the Scripture, but also the Fathers of the Church –and among them the greatest Latin Father, Jerome–, from which to take in the purest mes-sage of the Scripture, a redditio ad fontes, which he will defend throughout his life as the foundation of the theological renewal that he perceived as profoundly necessary in his time. The study deals with his herculean nine-volume edition of Saint Jerome’s Opera omnia –the first and most important of his many editions of the Fathers of the Church–. Because we anticipate that, with Erasmus, “the first patrology” was born. Its great editorial and translating task will facilitate the dissemination of patristic thought that will influence studies on New Testament philology as well as the development of dogmatic theology and Christian piety itself.
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Erasmus, Biographer of Jerome: Hieronymi Stridonensis Vita (1516)
Victoriano PASTOR JULIÁN
Original title: Erasmo, biógrafo de san Jerónimo: Hieronymi Stridonensis Vita (1516)
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Biography, Erasmus, Humanism, Saint Jerome, Theology.
The life of Jerome of Stridon was written by Erasmus as an introduction to the edition of his Opera Omnia (1516). He developed it mainly from Jerome’s own correspondence, the first four volumes consisting of its edition. Erasmus read and imitated Jerome’s work, due to his piety and knowledge since his youth. This is the reason why the Vita Hieronymi will develop around two axes: Jerome according to Jerome and Jerome according to Erasmus. Thus, he conceives life as a forensic speech in which he defends Jerome’s cause and, at the same time, that of Humanism and of the vera theologia, of which he will be a defender and advocate. Thereby, Jerome’s biography turns, so to speak, into an apologia pro vita sua for Erasmus. In this work, we have translated –for the first time in Spanish language– more than a third of its 1565 lines, keeping the Latin text at the bottom of the page. At the same time, we have studied both Jerome’s and Erasmus’ context, focusing especially on the almost total complicity of both theologians and humanists.
