his defence of it against Augustine's criticism shews him to have the wider culture and greater knowledge. But the lives of the hermits incorporate legend with history. In controversy his ordinary method is to take as absolute truth the decisions of bishops and even the popular feeling in the church and to use all his powers in enforcing these. His own life and documents which give its details are his best contributions to church history.
(5) His knowledge of and sympathy with human history generally was very like that of monks of later times. He had much curiosity and considerable knowledge. His translation of the Chronicle of Eusebius shews his interest in history, but is very uncritical. The mistakes of Eusebius are not corrected but aggravated by the translator; his own additions shew that his critical faculty was not such as to guard against the admission of considerable errors; and his credulity constantly reveals itself. He nowhere shews even the rudiments of a philosophy of history. He knew both the events of his time and facts lying beyond the usual range. He was acquainted with the routes to India, and mentions the Brahmans (Epp. xxii. lxx. etc.) and Buddha (adv. Jov. i. 42). Events like the fall of Rome deeply impressed him; but he deals with these very much as the monks of the middle ages dealt with the events of their time. He is a recluse, with no political sagacity and no sense of human progress.
(6) His letters are the most interesting part of his writings. They are very various; vivid in feeling and graphic in their pictures of life. The letters to Heliodorus (xiv.) on the praise of hermit life; to Eustochium (xxii.) on the preservation of virginity in the mixed life of the Roman church and world; to Asella (xlv.) on his departure from Rome; to Nepotian (lii.) on the duties of the presbyters and monks of his day; to Marcella from Paula and Eustochium (xlvi.), giving the enthusiastic description of monastic life among the holy places of Palestine; to Laeta (cvii.) on the education of a child whose grandfather was a heathen priest, whose parents were Christians, and who was herself to be a nun; to Rusticus (cxxv.), giving rules which shew the character of the monastic life in those days,—all these are literary gems; and the Epitaphia of Blesilla (xxxix.), Fabiola (lxxvii.), Nepotianus (lx.), Paula (cviii.), and Marcella (cxxvii.) form a hagiography of the best and most attractive kind.
Style.—His style is excellent, and he was rightly praised .as the Christian Cicero by Erasmus, who contrasts his writings with monkish and scholastic literature. It is vivid, full of illustrations, with happy turns, such as "locus a non lucendo,"Ὀνῷ λύπα, "fac de necessitate virtutem," "Ingemuit totus orbis et Arianum se esse miratus est." The scriptural quotations and allusions are often overdone and forced, but with no unreality or cant; and he never loses his dignity except in some controversial personalities.
Character.—He was vain, and unable to bear rivals; extremely sensitive as to the estimation of his contemporaries, especially the bishops; passionate and resentful, but at times suddenly placable; scornful and violent in controversy; kind to the weak and poor; respectful in dealing with women; entirely without avarice; extraordinarily diligent, and nobly tenacious of the main objects of his life.
Influence.—His influence grew through his life and increased after his death. "He lived and reigned for a thousand years." His writings contain the whole spirit of the church of the middle ages; its monasticism, its contrast of sacred things with profane, its credulity and superstition, its deference to hierarchical authority, its dread of heresy, its passion for pilgrimages. To the society which was thus in a great measure formed by him, his Bible was the greatest boon which could have been given. But he founded no school and had no inspiring power; there was not sufficient courage or width of view in his spiritual legacy. As Thierry says, "There is no continuation of his work; a few more letters of Augustine and Paulinus, and night falls over the West." A cheap popular Life of St. Jerome by E. L. Cutts is pub. by S.P.C.K. in their Fathers for Eng. Readers. A trans. of his principal works is in the Lib. of Nic. and Post.-Nic. Fathers. The Bp. of Albany has in preparation (1911) a trans. of the Epistolae Selectae (ed. Hurter).
[W.H.F.]
Hierotheus, a writer whose works are quoted by the Pseudo-Dionysius, who styles him his teacher. Two long extracts are preserved in the de Divinis Nominibus of the Pseudo-Dionysius (c. 2, §§ 9, 10; c. 4, §§ 15–17), and there are incidental references to him elsewhere. In the first extract (c. 2, § 9 fin.) his Theological Institutes (θεολογικαί στοιχειώσεις) are cited; in the second his Amatory Hymns (ἐρωτικοι ὕμνοι). His writings most probably belong to the school of Edessa, and should be dated about the middle or end of 5th cent. In confirmation of this view Dr. Westcott has noted a statement in Assemani (Biblioth. Orient. ii. 290, 291) that Stephen Bar-Sudaili, abbat of a monastery at Edessa, published a book under the name of Hierotheus to support his own mystic doctrines. Assemani says that this abbat held the doctrine of final restoration as taught by Origen, and was abused for it by Xenaias and James of Sarug, bp. of Batnae (Bibl. Or. i. 303 ii. 30–33; Ceillier, x. 641; Westcott on Dionys. Areop. in Contemporary Rev. May, 1867). The mystical views in the works of Hierotheus and Dionysius easily lend themselves to the support of that theory. According to Assemani (ii. 291), Bar-Sudaili wrote under the name of Hierotheus to prove "finem poenarum aliquando futurum, nec impios in saeculum saeculorum puniendos fore, sed per ignem purgandos; atque ita et malos daemones misericordiam consequuturos esse, et cuncta in divinam naturam transmutanda, juxta illud Pauli, ut sit Deus omnia in omnibus." In Mai's Spicilegium Romanum (iii. 704–707) will be found other fragments of this writer, translated from some Arabic MSS. Their theology savours, however, more of the 4th and 5th cents. than of the 1st. But see A. L. Frothingham, Stephen Bar-Sudaili and the Book of Hierotheos (Leyden, 1886).
[G.T.S.]
Hilarianus (1) Quintus Julius (Hilarion), a Latin Chiliast writer c. 397, author of two
