Note 113 — Chapter VII · ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS

The latest expressions of rationalism among churchmen were to the full as angrily met by the champions of orthodoxy as the attacks of enemies; and, indeed, there was naturally something of bitterness in the resistance of the last few critical spirits in the Church to the fast-multiplying insanities of faith. Thus, at the end of the fourth century, the Italian monk Jovinian fought against the creed of celibacy and asceticism, and was duly denounced, vituperated, ecclesiastically condemned, and banished, penal laws being at the same time passed against those who adhered to him.113 Contemporary with him was the Eastern Aerius, who advocated priestly equality as against episcopacy, and objected to prayers for the dead, to fasts, and to the too significant practice of slaying a lamb at the Easter festival.114 In this case matters went the length of schism. With less of practical effect, in the next century, Vigilantius of Aquitaine made a more general resistance to a more manifold superstition, condemning and ridiculing the veneration of tombs and bones of martyrs, pilgrimages to shrines, the miracle stories therewith connected, and the practices of fasting, celibacy, and the monastic life. He too was promptly put down, largely by the efforts of his former friend Jerome, the most voluble and the most scurrilous pietist of his age, who had also denounced the doctrine of Jovinian.115 For centuries no such appeal was heard in the western Church.