Tyrannius Rufinus

In about 372, Rufinus followed Jerome to the eastern Mediterranean, where he studied in Alexandria under Didymus the Blind for some time, and became friends with Macarius the elder and other ascetics in the desert.

There, while his patroness lived in a convent of her own in Jerusalem, Rufinus, at her expense, gathered together a number of monks to form a new monastery on the Mount of Olives, devoting himself to the study of Greek theology.

[2] In 394, as a result of the attacks by Epiphanius of Salamis upon the doctrines of Origen made during a visit to Jerusalem, a fierce quarrel broke out, which found Rufinus and Jerome on different sides.

In the autumn of 397 Rufinus embarked for Rome, where, finding that the theological controversies of the East were exciting much interest and curiosity, he published a Latin translation of the Apology of Pamphilus for Origen.

In his somewhat free translation of Origen's De Principiis (Περὶ Αρχῶν), published 398/399, Rufinus downplayed these controversial passages.

In the preface to De Principiis, Rufinus referred to Jerome as an admirer of Origen, and as having already translated some of his works with modifications of ambiguous doctrinal expressions.

[1] At the instigation of Theophilus of Alexandria, Pope Anastasius I (399-401) summoned Rufinus from Aquileia to Rome to vindicate his orthodoxy, but he excused himself from a personal attendance in a written Apologia pro fide sua.

These include Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, translated in 401 at the request of Bishop Chromatius of Aquileia as an antidote to the terror caused by the Gothic incursions into Italy.

[8] Rufinus translated the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius of Caesarea and continued the work from the reign of Constantine I to the death of Theodosius I (395).

Other translations by Rufinus include: He said; "[The Incarnation] was that the divine nature of the Son of God might be like a kind of hook hidden beneath the form of human flesh… to lure on the prince of this world to a contest; that the Son might offer him his human flesh as a bait and that the divinity which lay underneath might catch him and hold him fast with its hook… then, just as a fish when it seizes a baited hook not only fails to drag off the bait but is itself dragged out of the water to serve as food for others; so he that had the power of death sees the body of Jesus in death, unaware of the hook of divinity which lay hidden inside.

[9] Rufinus exerted considerable influence on Western theologians by thus putting the great Greek fathers into the Latin tongue.