Jerome, Letter 148, to Celantia – or rather, a letter of Pelagius?

A comment on my list of English translations of the letters of Jerome enquired about the authorship of Jerome’s letter 148, to Celantia (Ad Celantiam matronam, PL 22, 1204-29; 61:723-36; CSEL 56,329-355; CPL 745). This letter has long been known to be spurious.  Fremantle in his translation for the NPNF series, back in the 19th century, wrote:

This is an interesting letter addressed to a lady of rank, on the principles and methods of a holy life. It is not, however, the work of Jerome, of whose style it shows few traces. It has been ascribed in turn to Paulinus of Nola and Sulpicius Severus.

A bit of googling revealed the answer.  In what looks like a very interesting book, Hilmar Pabel, “Herculean Labours: Erasmus and the Editing of St. Jerome’s Letters in the Renaissance,” Brill (2008), p.153 and p.154 says:

Obviously, the critical sifting of works ascribed to Jerome did not begin with Erasmus, who quarantined most, but not all, of the spuria in a separate volume. As we have seen, Erasmus added three spurious texts at the end of the volume of exegetical letters. In the first volume, moreover, he inserted a letter to Celantia (ep. 148) and a familiar letter to Augustine. The former, probably written by Paulinus of Xola, was eloquent and learned but diverged from Jerome’s style. Erasmus included it owing to its subject matter—instructions for leading a pious life following Jerome’s letter to Paulinus on the proper conduct of a monk (cp. 58)—and as a sample of the eloquence of Paulinus, which the “most eloquent Jerome” greatly praised.109 Isidore Hilberg retained the letter to Cclantia in his critical edition of Jerome’s letters, noting that it appeared in a critical edition of Paulinus’ works.110 More recently, scholars have attributed the letter to Pelagius.111 In his argumentum to the letter to Augustine, Erasmus concedes that it is not sufficiently clear by whom or to whom the letter was written but believes the style is more characteristic of Augustine than of Jerome.112

110. CSEL 56/1: 329. Hilberg refers to Wilhelm Hartel’s edition of Paulinus in CSEL 29: 436-59.
111. Rees, “Pelagius: Life and Letters”, 2: 127-28.
112. Opera (1516) 1:96r.

Footnote 111 rather suggests that an English translation exists.  It turns out that the Rees reference is a combination of two earlier books.  The second of these is B.R. Rees, The Letters of Pelagius and his Followers, Boydell (1991), online here.  Pages 127-144 contain a full English translation of the letter 148 Ad Celantium.  The introduction is equally interesting:

The question of the authorship of this letter has attracted even more than the usual amount of speculation expected in connexion with this group of Pelagian works. At first, it was attributed to Jerome — in ‘seven of the ten manuscripts’ [2]; but two of these MSS give no ascription or title, and one (twelfth-century) has apocipha (sic) written in the margin by a later hand. Towards the end of the twelfth century the Abbot Guigo rejected it as a work of Jerome on stylistic grounds, and no one has assigned it to the latter since the time of Erasmus; he thought that Paulinus of Nola might be the author but Vallarsi suggested Sulpicius Severus on stylistic and other grounds.[3] More recently, Plinval has had no hesitation in attributing the letter to Pelagius, and other, more cautious scholars tend nowadays to agree with him: Evans endorses Kirmer’s discussion of the many similarities between this letter and Pelagian teaching in general and, in particular, in the Letter to Demetrias, favouring a date for its composition c.414, that is, in the same period as the latter.[4] Once again there is a plethora of biblical quotations, seventy-eight in all, many of them also to be found in the Demetrias
letter.

2. Evans, R.E, Four Letters of Pelagius, London, (1968), p.22.
3. See his note (c) on PL 22,1204.
4. Plinval, G. de, “Recherches sur l’oeuvre littéraire de Pélage”, Revue de Philologie 60 (1934), 9-42, 14ff.; Evans,1968, p.21f. The editor of PLS 1 (1103) also favours Pelagius, as does Nuvolone, E.G. and Solignac, A., ‘Pélage et pélagianisme’, Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascetique, mystique, doctrine et histoire, 12B (1986), 2889-942; 2900.

He also tells us what the letter is about:

This minor treatise takes the form of a letter, written to a married lady of noble birth, on the subject of the way to live a godly life with special reference to the obligations of a Christian wife. Beginning with an exhortation to read and study the scriptures, it goes on to warn against pride in high birth and to insist that true nobility is by no means confined to the circles of the wealthy; on the contrary, riches may prove to be a handicap unless the responsibilities which they bring are understood and carried out. A great part of the letter is thus concerned with practical advice on how to conduct the household economy, how to behave to other members of the household, how to dress in a becoming manner and how to make suitable arrangements for prayer and personal devotions in the midst of the noise and bustle of a housewife’s life. Towards the end special reference is made to a wife’s obligations to her husband and, in this connexion, to Celantia’s decision, taken some time ago but subsequently reversed, to abstain from sexual intercourse with her husband and that without mutual consent. The letter ends with the customary Pelagian warning against complacency: the pursuit of righteousness calls for the exercise of eternal vigilance and unremitting attention but it leads to rich rewards at the end of the road.

This collection by Rees of 18 obscure letters, most of which perhaps do not otherwise exist in English, deserves some attention of its own.  It would be good to identity all of them by CPL number, and draw attention to their existence.  But this must wait for another time.