Jerome's cover letter to Paula and Eustochium explaining why he translated only 39 of Origen's Luke homilies into Latin, and how he rates them against Origen's other work.
This short piece is not by Origen at all — it is Jerome's preface, written as a letter to two Roman noblewomen, Paula and Eustochium, explaining the translation that follows. They had complained that the Latin commentaries on Matthew and Luke available to them were either dull or trivial, and asked Jerome to translate Origen's thirty-nine homilies on Luke from the Greek instead. Jerome agrees, but frames the job as a modest favor rather than a major undertaking: he compares translating another writer's Greek into Latin to "writing with a stomach not one's own but another's," a line he borrows from Cicero ("Tullius").
Jerome is careful to manage expectations about Origen's stature. He mentions that Blaesilla (Paula's late daughter) had once asked him to translate Origen's much larger commentaries — twenty-six volumes on Matthew, five more on Luke, thirty-two on John — a task he says is beyond his strength and leisure. He also takes a swipe at an unnamed critic ("an ill-omened crow" who is himself "entirely dark" yet mocks the colors of other birds), a barbed reference to detractors of Origen. Jerome concedes in advance that in these Luke homilies Origen is "playing, as it were, like a child at games," reserving Origen's "serious, manly works" for a possible later translation project.
The preface closes with Jerome promising to send Paula and Eustochium the Matthew commentaries of Hilary and Victorinus next, so they can see that devotion to scripture was not lacking among Latin writers either. It ends by naming the translator ("Eusebius Jerome") and confirming the homilies were originally delivered as sermons on the Lord's day. For readers of the homilies themselves, this preface is valuable chiefly as a window into how Origen's reputation was managed and defended a century and a half after his death, and into the patronage relationships (elite Roman women funding and requesting biblical scholarship) that produced so much of the Latin Christian corpus.
“you asked that, scorning trifles of this sort, I should at least translate the thirty-nine homilies of our Adamantius”
— Homilies on Luke — Preface · read this chapter →
“a troublesome task, and, as Tullius says, like writing with a stomach not one's own but another's”
— Homilies on Luke — Preface · read this chapter →
“I confess, then — before he raises the objection himself — that in these treatises Origen is playing, as it were, like a child at games”
— Homilies on Luke — Preface · read this chapter →
“His other works are the serious, manly works of his old age”
— Homilies on Luke — Preface · read this chapter →
“translated into Latin by Eusebius Jerome, delivered on the Lord's days”
— Homilies on Luke — Preface · read this chapter →
Jerome wrote it, not Origen. It is Jerome's own letter to Paula and Eustochium explaining why and how he translated Origen's thirty-nine homilies on Luke from Greek into Latin.
Origen also wrote a much larger multi-volume commentary on Luke (part of a set covering Matthew and John too), but Jerome says translating that full set is 'beyond my strength, my leisure, and my labor.' He translates the shorter set of thirty-nine homilies instead, at Paula and Eustochium's request.
They are the Roman noblewomen Jerome addresses the preface to; they had read other Latin commentaries on Matthew and Luke, found them unsatisfying, and asked Jerome to translate Origen's homilies on Luke for them instead.
Both. He preemptively concedes that these particular homilies show Origen 'playing, as it were, like a child at games' compared to his weightier late works, while also mocking an unnamed critic ('an ill-omened crow... entirely dark') who attacks Origen.
He says he will send Paula and Eustochium the Matthew commentaries of Hilary and the martyr Victorinus, to show that devotion to scripture also existed among Latin-writing Christians, not just Origen in Greek.
Commentary on John, Book 1 · Commentary on John, Book 10 · Commentary on John, Book 2 · Commentary on John, Book 4 · Commentary on John, Book 5 · Commentary on John, Book 6 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 10 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 11 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 12 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 13 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 14 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 15