HELVIDIUS: A layman living in Rome at the time of Damasus I. (366-384). Concerning his personality nothing is known, except that he was an imitator of the pagan rhetorician and statesman Symmachus, and a pupil of the Arian Auxentius, bishop of Milan. During the second sojourn of Jerome at Rome, 382-385, Helvidius wrote a tract in which he combated the perpetual virginity of the mother of Jesus. This tract is known only through Jerome's counter-tract, composed prior to. 384. From this it appears that Helvidius also opposed the practical deductions made in the monastic circles of Rome from the perpetual virginity of Mary, and sharply antagonized the claims of monasticism to represent a higher ideal of Christian life. Helvidius proceeded upon the assumption that Mary, subsequent to the virgin-birth of Jesus, bore several children in wedlock with Joseph, citing Matt. i. 18, i. 25; Luke ii. 7. Jerome undertook to refute him and at the same time make propaganda for monasticism. Jerome's objections are purely sophistical. He argues that from the expression "before they came together" (Matt. i. 18) it can not be inferred that there was afterward an actual estate of conjugal cohabitation between them, that the expression "firstborn son" (Luke ii. 7), according to Old Testament phraseology, only indicated what ",openeth the womb," and by no means referred to younger brothers or sisters of Jesus, and that the brethren of the Lord were not literal brothers, but only cousins. Jerome also advocates the perpetual virginity of Joseph, because the virgin's son was to issue from a virginal marriage. Augustine enumerates the Helvidiani, or followers of Helvidius, in his catalogue of heretics. The views of Helvidius were shared by Bonosus (see Bonosus and the Bonosians).

G. Grützmacher.

Bibliography: The contemporary source of information is Jerome's tract De perpetua virpinitate beater Marion adversus Helvidium, in MPL xxxiii., Eng. transl. in NPNF, 2d ser., vi, 334 sqq. Other early sources are Augustine, Har., chap. lxxxiv., in MPL, xlii.; Gennadiue, De vir. ill., chaP. xx-fi., in MPL, (viii. Consult C. W. F. Walch, Historie der %taereien, iii. 577-598, Leipsic, 1785; 0. Zöckler, Hieronymus, pp. 94 sqq. Gotha, 1885; W. Haller, Tovinianue, in TU xvii (1897), 152 sqq.; DCB, ii. 892; cf. Ceillier, Auteurs sacrés, vii. /595, 884, viii. 46, 47.