Venial faults--it may be thought--innocent
displays of tender frailty; but woman's nature demands loftier
employments. A great soul craves occupations and recognizes obligations
more in harmony with the true nobility of human nature. Rome had no
monitor of the higher life until the monks came with their stories of
heroic self-abnegation and unselfish toil. The women felt the force and
truth of Jerome's criticism of their trifling follies when he said: "Do
not seek to appear over-eloquent, nor trifle with verse, nor make
yourself gay with lyric songs. And do not, out of affectation, follow
the sickly taste of married ladies, who now pressing their teeth
together, now keeping their lips wide apart, speak with a lisp, and
purposely clip their words, because they fancy that to pronounce them
naturally is a mark of country breeding."
Professor Dill is inclined to discount the testimony of Jerome
respecting the morals of Roman society. He thinks Jerome exaggerated the
perils surrounding women. He says: "The truth is Jerome is not only a
monk but an artist in words; and his horror of evil, his vivid
imagination, and his passion for literary effect, occasionally carry him
beyond the region of sober fact. There was much to amend in the morals
of the Roman world. But we must not take the leader of a great moral
reformation as a cool and dispassionate observer." But this observation
amounts to nothing more than a cautionary word against mistaking evils
common to all times for special symptoms of excessive immorality.
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