A Tired Ox
and a Johnny-Come-Lately Upstart! A Tired Ox and
a Johnny-Come-Lately Upstart! A Tired Ox and a
Johnny-Come-Lately Upstart!

A Tired Ox and a Johnny-Come-Lately Upstart!

Wednesday this week saw the Feast of Saint Jerome.  In the past, I have said that Jerome could easily be labelled “the patron saint of narks” because, though gifted in so many ways, he was also extremely cantankerous, probably not a man you would choose to share a few pints with.

Evidence of Jerome’s crankiness can be found in his quarrels with Saint Augustine of Hippo. Augustine first wrote to Jerome (by then a famous biblical scholar resident in Bethlehem) in 394 or 395, while Augustine was a priest of Hippo, which is in Algeria today and the place where Augustine a few years later became bishop.  In this letter, commenting on Jerome’s biblical scholarship, Augustine raised question marks against Jerome’s interpretation of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.  More specifically, he cast serious doubt on Jerome’s belief that Saint Paul’s rebuke of Saint Peter at Antioch was more or less a staged performance, a playing to the gallery.  Augustine said that this interpretation could suggest that Scripture contained a (well-intended) lie!  Augustine’s letter never actually reached Jerome because of some problem with the courier. However, soon after copies of it were circulating round Rome and North Africa.  Jerome therefore heard about Augustine’s criticism second-hand and was furious, becoming deeply suspicious of this young upstart, whom he regarded as some Johnny-come-lately theological novice, sneakily sending criticisms about a brother priest off to Rome!  (It wouldn’t be the only time - I can assure you - that such delations have happened in the history of the Church, but that’s a whole other reflection for another Friday!)  Jerome’s assumption was that Augustine was trying to make a name for himself at an old man’s expense, and warned him in a written reply that “a tired ox plants its foot all the more firmly!”  In other words, don't pick a fight with a veteran, mate, because veterans know plenty about fighting!

Schools, universities, businesses, the Church, government and nearly all areas of our world run on emails and messages.  Jerome and Augustine, two of the original four great Doctors of the Church (which means kind of Founding Fathers or First on the Team Sheet of Christian Thinkers), spent years afterwards at loggerheads by letter.  Their dispute has something to teach us about the dangers of working and communicating with others on a common project about which both parties care deeply.  It also offers potential solutions to problems that arise in our collaborative undertakings.  What do we do when parties involved in an initiative are convinced that the others have got something badly wrong?  How do they avoid ripping one another to pieces and fomenting bitterness?

Well, perhaps we could bear in mind that criticism that reaches an audience before it reaches the person being criticised will rarely be perceived as constructive correction offered to a colleague; rather, human nature will always interpret it more as an attempt at humiliation or a sinister agenda. Sixteen centuries and several technological revolutions after Jerome and Augustine’s epistolary spat, criticism that is not delivered first-hand but is spoken of in corridors or behind closed doors still remains one of the quickest ways to turn a disagreement into a potentially toxic feud and raise suspicion.  If there is something we need to say to someone, the order of communication matters: to them first and, ideally, to them alone (not always possible, of course, in complex organisations with collaborative projects because of, inter alia, line management and structural protocols, legal and safeguarding concerns, the need for witnesses to conversations, etc.).

The Sicilian Dominican priest Giovanni Castellano reminds us of the way Augustine, mindful of the history of their correspondence, opened his letters to Jerome in the years following this initial quarrel.  Way before he got into questions and criticisms or a point of contention or debate, he greeted Jerome as a “holy brother, worthy to be honoured in the bowels of Christ, and fellow presbyter”.  (Reading the word “bowels” may strike us as a strange and indelicate choice of word, but Castellano reminds us that bowels was the ancients’ way of naming the deepest seat of affection - something akin to the way we today might use “heart”).  So Augustine’s opening line is something akin to, “Before we get into it and risk falling out, let’s remember we are brothers in Christ and brother priests at the altar of Christ.”  This stopped the relationship from breaking down altogether.  But Augustine also went further. He wrote that he would be glad to be corrected by such a great man. Indeed, late in life Augustine displayed outstanding humility and magnanimity (especially for an academic, let alone one of his own reputation!) in penning a whole book, Retractationes, in which he goes back over his own works (of which there were more than 90) and admits where he had clearly got things wrong.  Unlike people of smaller intellect but greater ambition, Augustine cared more about getting to the truth than about winning arguments, asserting his own cleverness and putting people down.

In any school, university, business, parish, church or any situation where we have to write a difficult email or letter, before we set down what we think someone has got wrong, perhaps we can first think about what we share, what unites us, what binds us together?  “We both want this child to flourish.”  “We both care about this department.”  “We are on the same side here.” “We’re both less than perfect, both have our s**t going on, but we both want what’s best here.” The cynic in some might say that this is just a tactic, a softening-up approach.  For some, yes, perhaps it’s. But perhaps it is also simply true and saying so changes the tone of the conversation and the strategy that follows.  People can argue without wounding one another and correct when necessary without humiliating and belittling.

The story between Jerome and Augustine has a happy ending.  They ended up working together on the same side in the great Pelagian controversy of the 410s, and Jerome’s final letters to Augustine before leaving this world are warm and full of admiration for his thought and writings.  The narky, tired old veteran ox and the Johnny-come-lately upstart had become friends.  Last year I recall asking Saint Jerome to pray for the narks among us.  This year I think I will ask Jerome and Augustine, both adversaries and brothers, to pray for and inspire both believers and unbelievers among us, for we all have to collaborate on life, that we might remember what binds us to colleagues, that our criticisms might reach the person they are aimed at before they reach a wider audience, and that now and again we might have the humility to admit when we have got things wrong.