Against Helvidius: On the Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary
Jerome’s reply, written at Rome about AD 383, to Helvidius, who argued from the Gospels that Mary bore other children after Jesus. It is the main source for both sides of the early debate about the brothers of Jesus.
Helvidius, who like Jerome was then at Rome, had written that the “brothers” and “sisters” of Jesus named in the Gospels were children born to Mary and Joseph after the birth of Jesus. His work is lost. It is known only from this reply, in which Jerome quotes his arguments in order to refute them; the argument from the brothers is reported in section 13.
Jerome answers that Mary remained a virgin all her life. He argues that “brother” in Scripture can mean a kinsman, and that those called the Lord’s brothers were sons of another Mary, the wife of Clopas, whom he takes to be the sister of the Lord’s mother (sections 13–17). This reading makes them cousins of Jesus. The treatise is polemic, harsh in tone towards its opponent, and it gives Helvidius’s case only as Jerome chose to report it.