Jerome on the Assumption of Mary - spurious 9th century

[Steven Avery]

2) A letter suggesting the possibility of the Assumption was written and attributed to St. Jerome
(ad Paulam et Eustochium de Assumptione B. Virginis, Op. tom. v. p. 82, Paris, 1706).

The Assumption of Mary – Christian Resources

christiantruth.com

Thus the authority of the names of St. John, of Melito, of Athanasius, of Eusebius, of Augustine, of Jerome was obtained for the belief by a series of forgeries readily accepted because in accordance with the sentiment of the day, and the Gnostic legend was attributed to orthodox writers who did not entertain it. But this was not all, for there is the clearest evidence (1) that no one within the church taught it for six centuries, and (2) that those who did first teach it within the church borrowed it directly from the book condemned by pope Gelasius as heretical. For the first person within the church who held and taught it was Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem (if a homily attributed to John Damascene containing a quotation from from ‘the Eutymiac history’…be for the moment considered genuine), who (according to this statement) on Marcian and Pulcheria’s sending to him for information as to St. Mary’s sepulchre, replied to them by narrating a shortened version of the de Transitu legend as ‘a most ancient and true tradition.’ The second person within the church who taught it (or the first, if the homily attributed to John Damascene relating the above tale of Juvenal be spurious, as it almost certainly is) was Gregory of Tours, A.D. 590.

 

[Steven Avery]

OK. I don’t want to offend here other Christians who may believe in the assumption of Mary, but there was a treatise that Jerome had supposedly written to Paula and Eustochium on this subject that was believed to be a genuine work of Jerome for a long time. But Jerome himself never talks about this in all his works. Red flag, right? Well, it turns out that it has been proven to be a forgery. I can see the same pattern with this prologue.

 

[Steven Avery]

https://www.jstor.org/stable/30065945

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/30065944.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3Acbefe42fcab4c96e8abeae534b31fec9&ab_segments=&initiator=recommender&acceptTC=1

AN. [SEPTEMBR,

the presbyter, about the beginning of the 5th century, en- titled "Ad Paulam et Eustochium de Assumptione B. fM. Virginis," and maybe found in the 5th vol.

 

[Steven Avery]

A letter from Jerome (?) — Epistolae

Epistolae is a collection of letters to and from women in the Middle Ages, from the 4th to the 13th century. The letters, written in Latin, are linked to the names of the women involved, with English translations and, where available, biographical sketches of the women and some description of...

epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu

​

Historical context:​

The letter seems to have been written in the 9th century by Paschasius Radbertus, who wrote it as if it were by Jerome and addressed it to Paula and Eustochium; it was apparently written for the abbess of Soissons, Theodrada, and her daughter and it was attributed to Jerome. See Hannah W. Matis, “The Seclusion of Eustochium: Paschasius Radbertus and the Nuns of Soissons,” Church History 85:4 (2016), 665-89. I am endebted to Susan Boynton for alerting me to this article and this attribution.
That Jerome was interested in the Virgin Mary is clear from his dispute with Helvidius, see J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome, His Life, Writings and Controversies (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 105-06. The letter purports to be in answer to a request from Paula and Eustochium for a sermon on the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, a mode he insists he is not comfortable with. The work has nineteen chapters, of which the two introductory chapters, directly addressed to Paula and Eustochium, are cited here.

Authenticity:​

The text was written in imitation of Jerome in the ninth century.

Printed source:​

S. Hieronymi Operum Mantissa, ep.9, I, II, PL30, c.122-124

 

[Steven Avery]

A principal writing identified as "Pseudo Jerome" is the ninth-century writing the 'Epistle of Pseudo-Jerome to Paula and Eustochium,' a sermon on the Assumption of Mary.

 

[Steven Avery]

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary · Ælfric Online · DH Projects

 

[Steven Avery]

The Seclusion of Eustochium: Paschasius Radbertus and the Nuns of Soissons | Church History | Cambridge Core

The Seclusion of Eustochium: Paschasius Radbertus and the Nuns of Soissons - Volume 85 Issue 4

www.cambridge.org

Two good footnotes

May help on Pauls=a Eustochium scholarship

4
Radbert, Paschasius, De assumptione sanctae Mariae uirginis (uel Epistula beati Hieronymi et ad Paulam et Eustochium de assumptione), CCCM 56C, ed. Ripberger, A. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Cogitis me).

31
For Paula's own vulnerable position among the aristocracy and with regard to her own finances, see Brown, Peter, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), 269–72Google Scholar.