Against Jovinianus

Against Jovinianus (Latin: Adversus Jovinianum) is a two-volume treatise by the Church Father Saint Jerome.

Jovinian, about whom little more is known than what is to be found in Jerome's treatise, published a Latin treatise outlining several opinions: In addition to this, he held the birth of Jesus Christ to have been by a "true parturition"; that is, he disagreed with the common belief of his time, according to which the infant Jesus passed through the walls of the womb, as his resurrected body afterwards did out of the tomb or through closed doors.

Pammachius, Jerome's friend, brought Jovinian's book to the notice of Siricius, bishop of Rome, and it was shortly afterwards condemned in synods at that city and at Milan about 390 CE.

Little is known of Jovinian, but it has been conjectured from Jerome's remark in the treatise against Vigilantius, where Jovinian is said to have "amidst pheasants and pork rather belched out than breathed out his life,"[3] and by a kind of transmigration to have transmitted his opinions into Vigilantius, that he had died before 409, the date of that work.

The first book is wholly on the first proposition of Jovinian, that relating to marriage and virginity.