"Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price"
About this Quote
A fourth-century Christian has no time for romance-as-transaction, and Saint Jerome lands the point with the clean force of a proverb: love refuses the logic of the marketplace. The line is blunt on purpose. “Purchased” and “price” drag affection into the world of ledgers, dowries, patronage, and influence-peddling, then slam the door on the whole arrangement. Jerome isn’t merely idealizing emotion; he’s policing a boundary between what can be exchanged and what must be freely given.
The subtext is a warning to his own era’s wealthy converts and ecclesiastical climbers. Late antiquity ran on gift economies: favors, introductions, alms, and patron-client obligations that could look suspiciously like virtue while functioning as social leverage. Jerome’s wording implies how easily spiritual life can be corrupted when generosity becomes a bid for loyalty, or when intimacy becomes another form of status acquisition. If affection can be bought, then the buyer is in control; Jerome’s theology can’t tolerate that, because Christian love is supposed to mirror divine grace: unmerited, uncoerced, not “earned” by payment or performance.
Rhetorically, the sentence works because it’s symmetrical and economical. Two clauses, two key nouns, two commercial verbs. The repetition turns the thought into a moral litmus test: whenever you see money trying to secure devotion - in family arrangements, in politics, in the church - you’re watching affection get counterfeit. Jerome’s point still bites because modern life keeps inventing new ways to call buying “caring,” and he refuses the euphemism.
The subtext is a warning to his own era’s wealthy converts and ecclesiastical climbers. Late antiquity ran on gift economies: favors, introductions, alms, and patron-client obligations that could look suspiciously like virtue while functioning as social leverage. Jerome’s wording implies how easily spiritual life can be corrupted when generosity becomes a bid for loyalty, or when intimacy becomes another form of status acquisition. If affection can be bought, then the buyer is in control; Jerome’s theology can’t tolerate that, because Christian love is supposed to mirror divine grace: unmerited, uncoerced, not “earned” by payment or performance.
Rhetorically, the sentence works because it’s symmetrical and economical. Two clauses, two key nouns, two commercial verbs. The repetition turns the thought into a moral litmus test: whenever you see money trying to secure devotion - in family arrangements, in politics, in the church - you’re watching affection get counterfeit. Jerome’s point still bites because modern life keeps inventing new ways to call buying “caring,” and he refuses the euphemism.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Letters (Epistle 3: to Rufinus, on Bonosus) (Saint Jerome, 370)
Evidence: Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price. (Letter 3, section 6). This wording appears in the standard English translation of Jerome's correspondence hosted by New Advent, in Letter 3 (addressed to Rufinus), section 6, in the passage praising Jerome's friend Bonosus. Jerome (c. 347–420) wrote these early letters in the late 4th century; the exact composition date of Epistle 3 is typically placed in Jerome’s early correspondence (commonly dated to c. A.D. 370 in scholarly/edition chronologies), but individual manuscripts/editions may date it slightly differently. The quote is therefore from Jerome’s own work (a letter), not a later quote collection. The earliest 'publication' is in the manuscript tradition; later it was printed in patristic editions (e.g., Migne’s Patrologia Latina), and then translated into English in modern editions/web reproductions. Other candidates (1) The Principal Works of St. Jerome (St. Jerome, 2023) compilation95.0% St. Jerome. 7 the crown of virtue, and in return for his daily martyrdoms may he follow the Lamb robed in white raime... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Jerome, Saint. (2026, March 2). Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/love-is-not-to-be-purchased-and-affection-has-no-6697/
Chicago Style
Jerome, Saint. "Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price." FixQuotes. March 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/love-is-not-to-be-purchased-and-affection-has-no-6697/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price." FixQuotes, 2 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/love-is-not-to-be-purchased-and-affection-has-no-6697/. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.
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