RUFINO TURANNIO. — Ecclesiastical writer, born at Concordia in eastern Venetia around 345, of the Turannia family, for which there is local documentary evidence; he studied in Rome, where he was a companion of St. Jerome (v.), then went to Aquileia when St. Valerian was bishop there (he was bishop before 371), and was instructed by Chromatius, then a Aquileia (v.), and by the deacons Iovinus and Eusebius. He was baptized there and embraced the monastic life. Here he renewed his friendship with Jerome, who had come there from Trier.
Around 373, a “subitus turbo,” an “impia avulsio,” as Jerome himself put it, broke up the group that had formed around them. R. then returned to Rome and in 374 Melania the Elder (v.), the great Christian noblewoman, to Egypt, remaining among the monks while Melania went to Palestine. In Alexandria, R. Didymus the Blind (v.), studied the works of Origen and the Greek Fathers, became acquainted with John, the future bishop of Jerusalem, and with Theophilus, the future patriarch of Alexandria, and suffered violence at the hands of the Arians. In 378–79, R. joined Melania in Jerusalem, took up residence in the monastery on the Mount of Olives, and was ordained a priest in 390. At Easter 393, Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, came to Jerusalem to combat the Origenist position against Bishop John, who was supported by R. and Melania; he found a hearing from Jerome, who was staying with Paula at Bethlehem. This led to the first rupture between Jerome and R., though it was settled in 397. In that year R. returned to the West, wholly intent on making the Eastern Fathers known there, and during Lent 398 published his translation of Origen’s De principiis (Περὶ Ἀρχῶν), which inevitably caused scandal. His mention in the preface of the admiration Jerome had once felt for Origen provoked the second rupture between the two, and led to an unpleasant controversy between them. In 398–99, on the occasion of his mother’s death, R. returned to Aquileia, where he met Paulinianus, Jerome’s brother, who had already been ordained a priest.
Chromatius (bishop from 388) intervened to restore peace between R. and Jerome (Jerome, Contra Rufin., III, n. 2), without succeeding, however, and urged R. to translate Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History. The disturbances caused by the barbarian invasions, which were particularly dangerous in eastern Venetia, induced R. to leave Aquileia and once again join Melania in Rome. Around 408, he went with her and several of her relatives to a villa on the Strait of Messina, where he died in 411.
R.’s importance in Western Christian literature consists above all in his translations from Greek. He translated accurately and conscientiously, but often proceeded with great freedom, going so far as to omit, add, and modify the text. R. gives extensive evidence of this freedom of method in his version of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, in which he reduced the author’s ten books to nine, removing from the tenth what seemed important to him and adding it to the ninth; he then added two further books of his own, carrying the account from 324 to 395 (the death of Theodosius). History, however, was certainly not R.’s strong point.
R.’s preferences were directed toward Origen, whose works he had come to esteem during his stay in Alexandria and never subsequently abandoned. In his brief work De adulteratione librorum Origenis (PG 17, 615–32), he went so far as to maintain that the passages in Origen contrary to orthodoxy had been misinterpreted or corrupted by heretics. It is therefore unsurprising that, when translating the Περὶ Ἀρχῶν, R. should have softened and modified Origen’s text in several places (ibid., 11, 115–414, where fragments of the original Greek text are interspersed). He added two prefaces, one to Book I and the other to Book III. Of his translations of Origen, there are known to be 17 homilies on Genesis, 13 on Exodus, 16 on Leviticus, 28 on Numbers, 26 on Joshua, and 9 on Judges (ibid., 12, 145–990); in addition, 5 homilies on Psalm 36, 2 on Psalm 37, and 2 on Psalm 38 (ibid., 1319–1410). He also translated the prologue to the Song of Songs, three books and part of Book IV (ibid., 13, 61–198), as well as the ten books of the commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (ibid., 14, 833–1294). His admiration for Origen led R. to translate the first of the five books of the Apologia that the martyr Pamphilus had written about him (ibid., 17, 541–610); this is all that has survived of that work. R. also regarded Adamantius’s De recta in Deum fidem (ibid., 11, 1715–1884) as a work of Origen, and hastened to translate it in order to use it to demonstrate Origen’s orthodoxy. R. himself states that he translated ten homilies of St. Basil and an equal number of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Eight remain under St. Basil’s name (ibid., 31, 1723–95), on various subjects, although the seventh is not by St. Basil; and nine under St. Gregory’s name. R. also translated Basil’s two Partium monachorum, turning them into a kind of catechism consisting of 203 questions and answers. Translations from Evagrius are also known, and the translation of the Sententiae survives (cf. A. Wilmart, in Rev. bénédict., 28 [1911], p. 143). R. also translated the religious romance entitled Recognitiones Clementinae, whose original text is not extant (PG 1, 1205–1454); he likewise translated Peter’s epistle to James, which precedes the apocryphal homilies of Clement (ibid., 2, 31–56). It is now known that the collection Vitae Patrum (Historia eremitica, Historia monachorum: PL 21, 387–462) is also a translation from Greek: it is a collection of the lives of monks in which, taking as its occasion a journey to Egypt, he introduces its people and monastic customs (cf. C. Butler, The Lausiac history of Palladius [Cambridge 1898, 1904], against A. Preuschen, Palladius und Rufinus [Giessen 1898], who publishes the Greek text). The attribution to R. of the translation of Josephus Flavius’s De bello Iudaico is highly doubtful. His, however, is the translation of the Sentences of Sextus, a work by a Pythagorean philosopher revised by a Christian and comprising 451 maxims. R. believed it had been written by Pope Sixtus II, and for this was reproved by St. Jerome.
R.’s original production is much more limited; besides the aforementioned De adulteratione and the two books of the History, it includes the two books De benedictionibus Patriarcharum, a commentary on Jacob’s blessings of his sons (Gen. 49, 11 ff.), written at the request of Bishop Paulinus, in which he demonstrates his predilection for Origenist exegesis (PL 21, 295–336). More important is the Commentarius in symbolum Apostolorum, written around 404 at the request of an unknown Bishop Laurentius (ibid., 335–86). It is the first surviving work on this subject, and its author sets out to explain the baptismal Creed of Aquileia, which he himself had professed at his Baptism and which differed somewhat from that of Rome. His source is the catecheses of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The Apologia ad Anastasiam Romanae urbis episcopum (ibid., 623–28, written in 400) refers to the Origenist controversies with St. Jerome; in it he professes his orthodoxy concerning the rumors circulated against him because of his translation of Origen’s De principiis. Finally, there is the Apologia in Hieronymum in two books dedicated to Apronianus (ibid., 541–624), in which he again explains his doctrinal position, refuting the accusations against him and also attributing to Jerome a passion for the classics. Other works have been lost, and others falsely attributed to him (cf. ibid., 633 ff.).