Some websites claim that Jerome said that after being baptized you didn’t need to take a shower ever again. For instance this website states:
In fact, the association between the bath and baptism was so strong that some Christians, like the particularly grumpy St Jerome, argued that once you’d been baptised you didn’t need to bathe. Like Ever. Again. (The jury is still out on whether he actually thought this or it was just a useful strategy as a hermit to keep all those pesky followers away.)
So…. did he say this?
Well… sort of. The source is Jerome, Letter 14 (To Heliodorus, on the ascetic life), chapter 10. His correspondent was in danger of giving up. Jerome writes:
How long shall the smoky prison of these cities shut you in? Believe me, I see something more of light than you behold. How sweet it is to fling off the burden of the flesh, and to fly aloft to the clear radiance of the sky ! Are you afraid of poverty? Christ calls the poor blessed. Are you frightened by the thought of toil? No athlete gains his crown -without sweat. Are you thinking about food? Faith feels not hunger. Do you dread bruising your limbs worn away with fasting on the bare ground? The Lord lies by your side. Is your rough head bristling with uncombed hair? Your head is Christ. Does the infinite vastness of the desert seem terrible ? In spirit you may always stroll in paradise, and when in thought you have ascended there you will no longer be in the desert. Is your skin rough and scurfy without baths ? He who has once washed in Christ needs not to wash again. Listen to the apostle’s brief reply to all complaints: ‘The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall come after them, which shall be revealed in us.’ You are a pampered darling indeed, dearest brother, if you wish to rejoice here with this world and afterwards to reign with Christ. (Jerome, Select Letters, Loeb Classical Library, p.51)
The crucial bit in Latin:
Scabra sine balneis adtrahitur cutis? sed qui in Christo semel lotus est, non illi necesse est iterum lavare.
I’ve used the older Loeb translation here, but there is a ACW translation, marred by having too many section numbers of various kinds. This renders it:
Is your skin made scabrous without baths? But he who is once washed in Christ need not wash again. (p.69)
This helpfully supplies John 13:10 as the passage that Jerome has in mind:
Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. (ESV)
Dicit ei Jesus: Qui lotus est, non indiget nisi ut pedes lavet, sed est mundus totus.(Vulgate)
Jesus saith to him: He that is washed, needeth not but to wash his feet, but is clean wholly. (Douai)
So… the claim is literally true, but it’s not a considered theological claim that Jerome is making here. It’s an off-the-cuff remark in a different context. The would-be ascetic is missing the public baths. Jerome invokes, slightly trickily, the authority of Jesus.