Academic Exercise on the Abstinence of the Early Christians from Reading Profane Books

Henricus Ernstius (g) points out that Ambrose and Jerome, when they had interspersed their writings with several things from the works of poets and philosophers, were publicly defamed, as if they had defiled the purity of the church with such filth. Consequently, Jerome entirely abstained from the reading of profane authors; indeed, as he himself testifies in his Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, for fifteen years he never read any secular literature. Similarly, Gregory Nazianzen writes in a sacred poem that he finally cast all human learning at the feet of Christ. This Gregory, having entered the lecture hall of Basil while the latter was devoting himself to profane letters and the profession of rhetoric, took Basil by the hand and led him out of the school, saying: leave those things and attend to your salvation: as Eucherius relates these events in his Epistle to Valerian.

(g) σοφὸς ἄσοφος? p. m. 253.