F.W. Puller (Anglican) on St. Jerome on the Nature of Peter's Primacy and Jurisdiction

There is a passage in S. Jerome’s treatise against Jovinian (lib. i. § 26, Opp. ed. Vallars., ii. 279) which has been curiously misunderstood, as if it favoured the Romanist view of S. Peter’s relation to the other apostles, whereas in truth the passage, taken as a whole, is in thorough agreement with the ordinary Catholic teaching on that subject. S. Jerome is proving to Jovinian that S. John the Evangelist was a virgin disciple; and he says, “if he was not a virgin, let Jovinian explain why he was more beloved than the other apostles. But you reply that the Church is founded on Peter, though that same thing was done in another place upon all the apostles, and all of them receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the solidity of the Church is established equally upon them all; still among the twelve one is therefore chosen, that by the appointment of a head an occasion of dissension may be taken away (schismatic tollatur occasion). But why was not John chosen, who was a virgin? Deference was paid to age, because Peter was the elder, lest one, who was still a young man and almost a boy, should be given precedence before men of mature age (progressae aetatis hominibus praeferretur); and lest the good Master, who felt bound to remove from His disciples on occasion of strife (qui occasionem jurhii debuerat auferre discipulis), and who had said to them, ‘My peace I give unto you; peace I leave with you,’ and who had also said, ‘Whosoever would be great among you, let him be the least of all’—[lest He, I say,] should seem to furnish a cause of grudge against the young man whom He loved . . .Peter was an apostle, and John was an apostle, the first married, the second a virgin. But Peter was nothing else than an apostle (sed Petrus apostolus tantum); John was both an apostle, and an evangelist, and a prophet.” The Romanists are accustomed to quote a few words out of this passage in order to show that in it S. Jerome taught the doctrine that S. Peter was (and by implication the reigning pope is) the divinely appointed centre and root of unity in the Church. They say that S. Jerome teaches that S. Peter was appointed a head, that “the occasion of schism might be removed.” But, if S. Jerome had thought that S. Peter was invested with such a headship as that, his whole argument would have crumbled to pieces. He wants to show the complete equality of the apostles in their relation to the Church. But if one of them had been appointed by our Lord the necessary centre of unity, that equality would have existed no longer. The solidity of the Church would not in that case be “equally established upon them all.” S. Jerome, as a matter of fact, attributes to S. Peter a very different kind of headship. It is like the headship of the foreman in a jury, or like the headship of the Duke of Norfolk among our English peers. Such a headship, which is in fact a mere primary of order, would not affect the equality of the apostles in their relation to the Church. The Romanist mistake has arisen from not noticing that S. Jerome, when he says that our Lord took away an occasion of dissension, is referring to the disputes which used to take place among the disciples as to which of them should be greatest. S. Jerome thinks that our Lord gave a primacy of order to one of the twelve that “an occasion of dissension might be taken away” (schismatic tollatur occasion); just as he also thinks that “the good Master” chose S. Peter, the elder, rather than S. John, the younger, to be the head, in order that He might remove another “occasion of strife” (occasionem jurgii). It was no doubt the word “schisma” which caused the mistake. That word is sometimes used in the technical sense of schism. But it is also used both in Latin and Greek in the untechnical sense of dissension. For example, S. John uses the word σχισμα in three passages in his Gospel (S. John vii. 43; ix. 16; x. 19); and always in the sense of a dissension or dispute, or angry division of opinion. In the Vulgate, S. Jerome has rendered the word σχισμα by “dissension” in S. John vii. 43 and in S. John x. 19; but in S. John ix. 16, where the sense is precisely the same, he has used the word “schisma.” No one would suggest schism as the right English translation of S. Jerome’s “schisma” in S. John ix. 16; it there plainly means dissension; and the whole argument requires that a similar meaning should be attributed to it in the treatise against Jovinian. In a letter to Evangelus (Ep. cxivi., Opp. ed. Vallars., i. 1076) S. Jerome speaks of one among a body of presbyters being made a bishop “as a preventive against schism” (in schismatic remedium). Here the word “schismatis” has undoubtedly its technical meaning, schism. The sense of the word varies according to the context. It is worth noticing that S. Jerome wrote his treatise against Jovinian in the year 393, twelve years after the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, and right years after his departure from Rome in considerable wrath with the Roman clergy. The admirable teaching on the equality of the apostles, which is contained in this treatise, illustrates Mr. Gore’s view that S. Jerome changed his tone about the position and privileges of the Roman bishop after the death of Damasus at the end of the year 384 (see Gore’s Church and Ministry, 1st ed., p. 172). Closer acquaintance with the local Roman Church seems to have led S. Jerome to reconsider some of the views which he had expressed in his letters to Damasus, and thus a remedy was provided for the somewhat papalizing tone which he had imbibed in Rome during his catechumenate. S. Jerome’s faith was in fact purified, and brought up to the normal level of the faith of the saints. (F.W. Puller, The Primitive Saints and The See of Rome [London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1893], 392-95)