The Soldier and the King A common antithesis in the Fathers (*)

Neil Adkin

In 384 during his stay in Rome Jerome wrote his long letter to Eustochium on the preservation of virginity (epist. 22). Half way through the work (ch. 20) the virgin's mother is apostrophized. Jerome finds it inconceivable that she should be annoyed because her daughter has become the bride of Christ. She should on the contrary be pleased, for by doing this Eustochium has chosen to be the bride not of a soldier but of a king. The way Jerome expresses his point is at first sight a little puzzling. His meaning becomes clearer when it is realized that the antithesis he has used is quite common. Notwithstanding its relative frequency it has never before been identified or discussed.

It is not surprising here for Jerome to use the antithesis in connection with a virgin, for it was customary to say that the virgin married the king ('). Apart from this letter of Jerome's, however, there is only one other instance where the virgin's marriage to the king is contrasted with marriage to a soldier. Shortly after Jerome wrote to Eustochium the Spanish monk Bachiarius puts the antithesis to this use in his work de reparatione lapsl. Its twenty-first chapter draws a contrast between a fallen virgin and Bathsheba. While the latter was only a soldier's wife, the virgin is wife of the king.

In the period when Jerome and Bachiarius were writing the antithesis of king and soldier was a common one. However at that time its popularity was of recent date, for in the west the words are not found together before the middle of the fourth century. It appears that Hilary of Poitiers is the first latin writer to contrast them. The context here is a secular one (2). In his Collectanea antiariana (p. 177,