2 That is, the allegorical or mystical sense.
4 Didymus, the blind teacher of Alexandria.
5 He became bishop of Laodicea about 362. About 376 his followers became a sect, and about the same time he set up bishops of his own at Antioch and elsewhere.
6 Probably from Batanea, the ancient Bashan, where Porphyry is said to have been born.
7 "The patriarch (of the Montanists) resided at Pepuza, a small town or village in Phrygia, to which the sectaries gave the mystical name of Jerusalem, as believing that it would be the seat of the Millennial Kingdom, which was the chief subject of their hopes. Hence they derived the names of Pepuzians and Cataphrygians."-Robertson, Ch. Hist., vol. i. p. 76.
8 The Ophites, who took their name from ofij, a serpent, supposed the serpent of Genesis iii. to have been either the Divine Wisdom or the Christ Himself, come to set men free from the ignorance in which the Demiurge wished to keep them. The sect began in the second century and lasted until the sixth.
9 The Ben. editor prefers the form Tascodrogi, and states that it is the Phrygian or Galatian equivalent for Passaloryncitae. The sect is said to have been so called from their habit of putting the finger to the nose when praying.
10 Heretics who made offerings of bread and cheese (arto-turoj. Arto-tyros).-Aug. de Haeres, No. 28.
11 The people who lived between the Moselle and the Forest of Ardennes in and about the modern Treves.
12 The Athenaeum was the name specially given to a school founded by the Emperor Hadrian at Rome, about a.d. 133, for the promotion of literary and scientific studies. The word denoted in general any place consecrated to the goddess Athena.
13 Angulis. So. Cic. Rep. i. 2.
15 That is. Rufinus. See Preface to Book xii. of Isaiah, where Ruffnus is called Grunnius Corocotta Porcellus, and Preface to Book iv. of Jeremiah.
16 Scotorum pultibus praegravatus. The words have been translated "made fat with Scotch flummery" (Stillingfleet). Another rendering is, "having his belly filled and his head bedulled with Scotch porridge" (Wall on Infant Baptism, pt. i.c. 19, §3). Some think the words refer to Celestius, Pelagius' Supporter.
17 The letter to Pammachius (Jer. Letter XLVIII.) in defence of the book against Jovinianus.
18 Jovinian was condemned in a Synod at Rome about 390. Thirty years had thus passed since the events occurred to which Jerome refers. See Preface to the treatise against Jovinian.
19 Under whose care Eustochium had been trained.
20 By the Goths under Alaric. The city was taken in a.d. 410.
21 Ps. xxxix. 3, Ps. xxxix. 4.
23 Rufinus who died a.d. 410, in Sicily, on his way to the Holy Land from Aquileia and Rome, whence he had been driven by the troubles in Italy.