The Church Fathers · 383
Against Helvidius
De Perpetua Virginitate Beatae Mariae
Jerome · c. 347 – 420
What it is
A Roman layman had argued from the gospels that Mary bore other children after Jesus and that marriage is therefore no worse than virginity. Jerome answers by combing the usage of until and brother through the whole of scripture, and proposes that the brothers of the Lord were cousins.
Why it lasted
The book that settled the perpetual virginity of Mary as Western doctrine and produced the cousin solution the Latin church has used ever since. Its method is philology; its tone is what made Jerome feared.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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