Life and Works of
Rufinus.
————————————
—The References (where a simple number is given) are to the
pages in this Volume.
is chiefly known from his relation to Jerome, first as an
intimate friend and afterwards as a bitter enemy. The immense influence
of Jerome, through all the ages in which criticism was asleep, has
unduly lowered his adversary. But he has some solid claims of his own
on our recognition. His work on the Creed, besides its intrinsic
merits, must always be an authority as a witness to the state of the
creed as held in the Italian churches in the beginning of the 5th
century, as also to the state of the Canon and the Apocrypha at that
time. And it is to his translations that we are indebted for our
knowledge of many of the works of Origen, including the greatest of
them all, the Περὶ
᾽Αρχῶν. We are
the more grateful for his services because they were so opportune. The
works of Origen, which had been neglected in the West for a century and
to such an extent that the Pope Anastasius says (433) that he neither
knows who he was nor what he wrote, came suddenly into notice in the
last quarter of a century before Alaric’s sack of Rome 385–410: and it was at this moment that Rufinus appeared, according to his friend Macarius’ dream (439) like a ship laden with the merchandize of the East, an Italian who had lived some 25 years in Greek lands, and sufficiently equipped for the work of a translator. Through his labours during the last 13 years of that eventful time a considerable part of the works of the great Alexandrian have floated down across the ocean of the Dark Ages, and, while lost in their native Greek, have in their Latin garb come to enrich the later civilization of the West.
344–5: Rufinus was born at Concordia (Jer. Ep. v. 2. comp. with Ep. x. and De Vir. Ill. §53) between Aquileia and Altinum, a place of some importance, which was destroyed by the Huns in 452 but afterwards rebuilt. His birth was about the year 344 or 345, he being slightly older than Jerome. Nothing is known of his education or the events of his youth; but that he was early acquainted with Jerome and was interested in sacred literature is seen from the fact that in 368 when Jerome went with Bonosus to Gaul, Rufinus begged him to copy for him the works of Hilary on the Psalms and on the Councils of the Church (Jer. Ep. v. 2).
372–3: His mother did not die till the year 397, as is seen
from Jerome’s mention of her (Letter LXXXI, 1), and it would
appear that both his parents were Christians. But he was not baptized
till about his 28th year. He was at that time living at Aquileia, where
he had embraced the monastic state, and was a member of the company of
young ascetics to which Jerome and Bonosus belonged. The presence among
them of Hylas (Jerome Letter III, 3) the freedman of Melania, the
wealthy and ascetic Roman matron, shows that that relation had already
begun which was afterwards of such importance in the life of Rufinus. It must have been just before the breaking up of that company that he was baptized, for Jerome, writing of him (Ep. iv. 2) in 374 from Antioch says “He has but lately been washed and is as white as snow.” He himself gives a full account of his baptism in his Apology (436).