Dialogue against the Luciferians
A dialogue in which Jerome argues against the followers of Lucifer of Cagliari, who refused communion with bishops that had signed the creed of Ariminum. Sections 17–19 describe that council from its acts and contain the line about the world finding itself Arian.
Lucifer, bishop of Cagliari, would not accept back the bishops who had signed at Ariminum in 359, and his followers kept apart from the rest of the church. Jerome wrote this dialogue against them; the translators’ introduction dates it to about 379, some twenty years after the council. To show that the bishops who signed had been deceived and were not heretics, he tells what happened at Ariminum.
His account matters because he says where it comes from: the acts of the synod, which he tells the reader can be consulted in the archives of the churches, and the memory of people still living (18). It is all the same an argument for one side of a later quarrel. Jerome wants the signatories excused, and he presents them as simple men tricked by the wording of Valens of Mursa.
Cited in
- AD 359 to AD 360, firm date