Rufinus

“ It is a curious and important fact that all the translations known to have been made by Rufinus have survived. This is due no doubt to their being the only translations extant in the Middle Ages of great writers like Origen and Basil, and to the impossibility of procuring others. The uncritical spirit of the time may have been favourable to them. Had they been recognized as the works of Rufinus, they might have been destroyed; but it was possible, even after the revival of learning, to attribute many of them to Jerome. ”

“ Agathias, Macedonius, and Paulus Silentiarius, Greeks of Byzantium about the age of Justinian, together with Rufinus, whose date is not quite certain, yield the very last fruits of the Greek genius, after it had been corrupted by the lusts of Rome and the effeminacy of the East. Very pale and hectic are the hues which give a sort of sickly beauty to their style. Their epigrams vary between querulous lamentations over old age and death and highly colored pictures of self-satisfied sensuality. Rufinus is a kind of second Straton in the firmness of his touch, the cynicism of his impudicity. ”

“ So great was the force of conviction brought to bear on them that, to prevent their heresy being exposed in their presence, they chose to stay away and be condemned.” From the letter of Anastasius to John of Jerusalem about Rufinus we gather that, while he strongly disapproved the translation of Origen, he left Rufinus himself to his own conscience, and did not care to know what had become of him. ”

“ Rufinus blushed and murmured something about going every now and then. He walked out of the room, and sought the Referendarius in the next room. This official was reading a document. He did not look up when Rufinus entered, but went on with his reading. At last, after a prolonged interval, he turned round and said: “What is it?”
“May I go to the races?” asked Rufinus.
“Well,” said the high official, “what about your work?” ”

“ The chief administrator of affairs in the beginning of the reign of Arcadius was Rufinus, an Aquitanian Gaul; the very model of an accomplished adventurer. His intrigues, his arrogance, his rapacious avarice excited the indignation of the people, and he was at last assassinated by the troops to whom he was making an oration in the presence of the Emperor. ”

“ Then Rufinus began to beg and pray, and announced the speedy approach of the emperor. Fired with divine zeal the holy Ambrosius exclaimed “Rufinus, I tell you beforehand; I shall prevent him from crossing the sacred threshold. If he is for changing his sovereign power into that of a tyrant I too will gladly submit to a violent death.” On this Rufinus sent a messenger to inform the emperor in what mind the archbishop was, and exhorted him to remain within the palace. Theodosius had already reached the middle of the forum when he received the message. ”

“ He aspired to place his fortune on a secure and independent basis, which should no longer depend on the caprice of the young emperor; yet he neglected to conciliate the hearts of the soldiers and people, by the liberal distribution of those riches, which he had acquired with so much toil, and with so much guilt. The extreme parsimony of Rufinus left him only the reproach and envy of ill-gotten wealth; his dependants served him without attachment; the universal hatred of mankind was repressed only by the influence of servile fear. ”

“ But the lord of all those multitudes was alone in his palace. He had not shown good will to man; he had not learnt mercy and peace from the Prince of Peace; and the door was shut upon him. He was a resolute Spanish Roman, a well-tried soldier, a man advancing in years, but he wept, and wept bitterly. Rufinus found him thus weeping. It must have been strange to the courtier that his master did not send his lictors to carry the offending bishop to a dungeon, and give all his court favor to the heretics, like the last empress who had reigned at Milan. ”

“ While iniquity of every kind presided, therefore, in the respective cities, the money from all quarters flowed into the coffers of Rufinus and Stilico; while on the reverse, poverty preyed on the habitations of those who had formerly been rich. Nor were the emperors acquainted with anything that was done, but thought all that Rufinus and Stilico commanded was done by virtue of some unwritten law. After they had amassed immense wealth, Rufinus began to concert the means of becoming emperor, by making his own daughter, who was now marriageable, the wife of the emperor ”

“ For this reason Rufinus professed on every occasion great kindness for the young man, and was continually speaking in his commendation to the emperor Arcadius, who made him count of the east, a dignity which authorizes every one on whom it is conferred to superintend the conduct of all the prefects of the provinces through the east, and to correct whatever is improperly done. ”

“ Rufinus was right. In these times each man lived solely to spite his neighbor, and he who could be most brazenly selfish, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, was the most certain to get on in life. Fool that he was to let other folks’ woes destroy his peace and hinder him in his scientific advancement! ”

“ A criticism on Rufinus’ Apology to Anastasius. His excuses for not coming to Rome are absurd. His parents are dead and the journey is easy. No one ever heard before of his being imprisoned or exiled for the faith. ”

“ The rest of the prophecy dealing with the inheritance was as usual fabricated to suit the desires of their client. But Rufinus gaped for his prey in vain like a wild beast that has gone blind. For Pontianus not only150 did not leave Rufinus' daughter as his heir—he had discovered her evil character—but he did not even make her a respectable legacy. He left her by way of insult linen to the value of 200 denarii, to show that he had not forgotten or ignored her, but that he set this value on her as an expression of his resentment. ”

“ The influential position of Rufinus at the court fell to the grand-chamberlain Eutropius, who had been an enemy of the late prefect. He had induced Arcadius to marry Eudoxia, daughter of a Frankish chief, instead of the daughter of Rufinus, as the latter had desired. The fall of Eutropius was brought about by Gaïnas, now a master of the soldiers, who sought to play the rôle of Stilicho in the East. He was supported by the empress Eudoxia, who chafed under the domination of the chamberlain. ”

“ Rufinus replied “With your permission I will hasten to the bishop, and by my entreaties induce him to remit your penalty.” “He will not yield” said the emperor. “I know the justice of the sentence passed by Ambrose, nor will he ever be moved by respect for my imperial power to transgress the law of God.”
Rufinus urged his suit again and again, promising to win over Ambrosius; and at last the emperor commanded him to go with all despatch. Then, the victim of false hopes, Theodosius, in reliance on the promises of Rufinus, followed in person, himself. ”

“ Rufinus, who for other reasons was an enemy to many other persons, through his excessive ambition of being superior to all, on hearing this, persuaded the emperor to send Promotus from the court to some place where he might exercise the soldiers. Having obtained his desire, he employed some Barbarians to wait in ambuscade as he was entering Thrace. These, as they were commanded, attacked him by surprize, and killed him. He was a man superior to the desire of wealth, and had behaved with sincerity both toward the commonwealth and the emperors ”

“ Rufinus, [1] presbyter of the church at Aquileia, was not the least among the doctors of the church and had a fine talent for elegant translation from Greek into Latin. In this way he opened to the Latin speaking church the greater part of the Greek literature; translating the works of Basil of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, Gregory Nazianzan, that most eloquent man, the Recognitions of Clement of Rome, the Church history of Eusebius of Cæsarea in Palestine, the Sentences of Xystus, [2] the Sentences of Evagrius and the work of Pamphilus Martyr Against the mathematicians. ”

“ And in consequence of this state of things, Rufinus, at that time prefect of the camp, was exposed to the most imminent danger. For he himself was compelled to go among the soldiers, whose natural ferocity was inflamed by their want of food, and who on other occasions are by nature generally inclined to be savage and bitter against men of civil dignities. ”

“ Here Rufinus broke in with some vehemence, and the discussion would have become a dispute if Paula had not intervened by requesting her zealous host to give her the results, at any rate, of his studies.
“I find,” said Rufinus very confidently, as he stroked down his long beard, “that they are not merely shrewd because their faculties are early sharpened to make up by mental qualifications for what they lack in physical advantages ”

“ According to Rufinus's version of the sixth canon of the Council of Nicæa, the Bishop of Rome had entrusted to him the care of the suburbicarian churches [probably including Lower Italy and most of Central Italy, with Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica] . ... But many causes tended to extend the authority of the Roman patriarch beyond these modest limits. The patriarch of Constantinople depended largely for his authority on the will of the emperor, and his spiritual realm was agitated by the constant intrigues of opposing parties. ”

“ The patrician Appius Claudius and the farmer Manius Curius—vehement in their personal antagonism—jointly by wise counsel and vigorous action conquered king Pyrrhus; and while Gaius Fabricius as censor inflicted penalties on Publius Cornelius Rufinus for his aristocratic sentiments and aristocratic habits, this did not prevent him from supporting the claim of Rufinus to a second consulate on account of his recognized ability as a general. ”

“ But Rufinus soon experienced, that a prudent minister should constantly secure his royal captive by the strong, though invisible chain of habit; and that the merit, and much more easily the favor, of the absent, are obliterated in a short time from the mind of a weak and capricious sovereign. While the praefect satiated his revenge at Antioch, a secret conspiracy of the favorite eunuchs, directed by the great chamberlain Eutropius, undermined his power in the palace of Constantinople. ”

“ He asserted, that when Theodosius was on his death-bed, he gave him a special charge to take care of the affairs of both emperors. When Rufinus understood this, he endeavoured by all the art in his power to prevent the expedition of Stilico into the east, and likewise to disperse and weaken the military force of Arcadius. Indeed, while he was projecting these schemes, he found men for his purpose more wicked than he desired, by whose aid he occasioned great calamities to the Romans. ”

“ The learned Rufinus, who was summoned by his enemies to appear before a Roman synod, 28 wisely preferred the dangers of a besieged city; and the Barbarians, who furiously shook the walls of Aquileia, might save him from the cruel sentence of another heretic, who, at the request of the same bishops, was severely whipped, and condemned to perpetual exile on a desert island. 29 The old man, 30 who had passed his simple and innocent life in the neighborhood of Verona, was a stranger to the quarrels both of kings and of bishops ”

“ Rufinus, as we see by his Preface to the former book, considered it unsatisfactory to expound the Blessing upon Judah apart from those on his brethren. Paulinus therefore, taking the occasion of their common friend Cerealis’ journey to Rome, sends the following letter to induce Rufinus to expound the remaining Benedictions. ”

“ This combination of the contemplative life and the life of learning- had already developed in the Egyptian monasteries. When Jerome came to Bethlehem in 386, the friendship formed at Aquileia was renewed. Another of the intimates of Rufinus was John, bishop of Jerusalem, and formerly a Nitrian monk, by whom he was ordained to the priesthood in 390. In 394, in consequence of the attack upon the doctrines of Origen made by Epiphanius of Salamis during a visit to Jerusalem, a fierce quarrel broke out, which found Rufinus and Jerome on different sides ”

“ The celebrated Egyptian solitary, Ammonius (who will come before us again) , administered the sacrament, and Gregory of Nyssa delivered a discourse.375 Rufinus now surrounded himself with a powerful party of followers; Arcadius was too stupid to see, or too timid to oppose, the dangerous ambition of his so-called protector.
But the death of Theodosius and the elevation of Stilicho to the guardianship of the West brought the intriguer face to face with an able and determined soldier, who united some of the ferocity of the barbarian with the steadfast patriotism of an old Roman. ”

“ And after the return of these blessed men from exile, this holy woman built a house in Jerusalem, wherein she dwelt for twenty-seven years, and wherein she had a congregation of sisters, who were in number about fifty; and moreover, the honourable nobleman Rufinus, who came from Italy and belonged to the city of Aquileia, clave unto her her whole life long, and he led a life of glorious works, and finally he was held to be worthy of the office of elder. Now among men one would not quickly find one who was more understanding, and gracious, and pleasant than he. ”

“ Rufinus’ Translation of Pamphilus’ Apology with the Preface prefixed to it and the book on the Falsification of the Books of Origen, (2) the Translation of the Περὶ ̓Αρχῶν and Rufinus’ Preface, (3) The Apology of Rufinus addressed to Anastasius (see p. 430) , and (4) Anastasius’ letter to John of Jerusalem (p. 432 Apol. ii, 14, iii, 20) . He had also other letters of Anastasius like that addressed to the Bishop of Milan (Jerome Letter 95. See also Apol. iii, 21) . But he had not the full text of Rufinus’ Apology (c. 4, 15) . ”