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The Making of a Christian Writer

in The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship

This chapter examines Jerome's earliest attempts to describe himself as a scholar and an adherent of Christian asceticism. Jerome appears in the literary record as a young Latin ascetic resident in ... More

This chapter examines Jerome's earliest attempts to describe himself as a scholar and an adherent of Christian asceticism. Jerome appears in the literary record as a young Latin ascetic resident in Antioch and its hinterland in the 370s. The letters he wrote during these years show a curious combination of burning enthusiasm for asceticism and self-conscious striving after literary effect. Jerome was both a passionate convert to the new models of Christian renunciation then emerging from the deserts of Egypt and Syria, and a proud product of the best education the Latin West could provide. There are signs that he felt some tension between these two cultures. The general impression, however, is one of harmony, if not of settled purpose.Less

Erasmus’s Vita Hieronymi (1516): Taking Editorial Work Personally

Douglas S. Pfeiffer

in Authorial Personality and the Making of Renaissance Texts: The Force of Character

Chapter 3 shows how Erasmus refines the humanist practice of extrapolating authorial character from textual evidence, making it into the interpretive engine powering both his ambitious edition of ... More

Chapter 3 shows how Erasmus refines the humanist practice of extrapolating authorial character from textual evidence, making it into the interpretive engine powering both his ambitious edition of Saint Jerome and, by virtue of Erasmus’s widespread influence, the larger sixteenth-century enterprise of ad fontes publication. An intensive focus on the person of Jerome pervades the project, from its overall architecture to its inclusion of a prefatory Vita Hieronymi. In the edition’s paratexts, Erasmus also articulates his singular style-man correspondence theory that undergirds his editorial process itself, including his persistent concern throughout this and his other textual editions with scrutinizing the authenticity of the received corpus. The chapter also approaches Erasmus’s editorial methods from a disciplinary perspective to show how his biographical focus meticulously integrates practices of both reception (scholarship and criticism) and production (fiction making) as against the conventionally jurisdictional nature of the humanistic fields then as now.Less

Interpretation and the Construction of Jerome's Authority

in The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship

Jerome believed that the task of the commentator was to convey what others have said, not to advance his own interpretations. However, an examination of his commentaries on the Prophets shows that ... More

Jerome believed that the task of the commentator was to convey what others have said, not to advance his own interpretations. However, an examination of his commentaries on the Prophets shows that their contents are arranged so as to construct a powerful, but tacit, position of authority for their compiler. By juxtaposing Jewish and Greek Christian interpretations as he does, Jerome places himself in the position of arbiter over both exegetical traditions. But because he does not explicitly assert his own authority, he can maintain a stance of humility appropriate for a monk. Here, Jerome may have been a more authentic representative of the tradition of Origen than was his rival, for all that he was willing to abjure Origen's theology.Less

Experiments in Exegesis

in The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship

Jerome became more willing to distance himself from his Greek sources and to emphasize his independent access to Jewish materials as his scholarly method matured. In order to represent his use of ... More

Jerome became more willing to distance himself from his Greek sources and to emphasize his independent access to Jewish materials as his scholarly method matured. In order to represent his use of Hebrew and Jewish exegesis as a radical innovation, Jerome played down the central role of Jewish learning in Origen's own biblical scholarship—although he could not erase the connection completely, for Origen's example provided crucial legitimation for Jerome's engagement with a tradition regarded by most Christians with suspicion, if not hostility. At the same time, Jerome's mature commentaries continue to acknowledge, even to advertise, their indebtedness to Greek Christian allegorical exegesis. Jerome moved, over perhaps five to seven years, from an almost abject deference to Origen as ultimate authority, to a far more ambivalent relation to him both as a valued, but problematic source and a necessary but insufficient model.Less

The Book and the Voice

in The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship

Throughout his works, Jerome makes constant reference to his reliance on stenographers to take dictation as he composes. In a few texts he reports that his assistants also read to him. These modes of ... More

Throughout his works, Jerome makes constant reference to his reliance on stenographers to take dictation as he composes. In a few texts he reports that his assistants also read to him. These modes of literacy have complex associations within Jerome's own texts. In the context of his broader social milieu, they mark his mode of literary production as elite, even aristocratic. His command of skilled assistants implied that he had the resources to pay them, or at least to support them. His emphasis on their presence drew attention to the similarities between the way he wrote and the habits that elite authors had developed over centuries.Less

Jerome's Library

in The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship

Jerome's method as a commentator was framed explicitly in terms of reliance on earlier authorities. By making the citation and paraphrase of a range of earlier writers' works central to his ... More

Jerome's method as a commentator was framed explicitly in terms of reliance on earlier authorities. By making the citation and paraphrase of a range of earlier writers' works central to his scholarship, Jerome made possession of a considerable library essential. Books in antiquity were very costly. Their acquisition in the numbers that Jerome required would have demanded access to the kind of fortune that, in antiquity, was more often inherited than earned. Furthermore, the possession and use of books was in itself a marker of membership in the elite, from which the monk was supposed to have cut himself off. This chapter considers the contents of the library at Bethlehem in comparison to other ancient book collections. The inventory begins from Jerome's explicit references to books in his possession, takes in the evidence of source-critical studies of his works, and considers also the books that Jerome probably had on hand but did not use as sources.Less

Toward a Monastic Order of Books

in The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship

This chapter collects evidence for the physical appearance of Jerome's books, their format, materials, and cost. A reconstruction of the physical form of the books that Jerome used situates his ... More

This chapter collects evidence for the physical appearance of Jerome's books, their format, materials, and cost. A reconstruction of the physical form of the books that Jerome used situates his literary activities more firmly in a specific place and time. A concrete idea of what Jerome's books looked like can serve as a useful safeguard against the tendency to picture him in the more familiar guises of a classical or a medieval scholar. Jerome's literary monasticism was a thoroughly late antique phenomenon. This is as true for the physical media through which he used and produced texts as it is for the model of the monastic life with which he was presented, one that left open no obvious place for a literary career.Less

Readers and Patrons

in The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship

Jerome had no choice but to cede control of his works to his readers and patrons. In some cases, this loss of control began even before he started work on a new project. Like some of his ... More

Jerome had no choice but to cede control of his works to his readers and patrons. In some cases, this loss of control began even before he started work on a new project. Like some of his contemporaries Jerome seems to have attempted in various ways to resist the demands of his audience. Ultimately, however, he could not escape them. Not only did his readers control the physical circulation of his writings, but many of his works were written to order, their production stimulated less by his own, ambitious research program than by the requests of correspondents, friends, patrons and potential patrons. Most importantly, Jerome's writings could be inserted into theological debates in ways he could neither predict nor control. Even his involvement in certain controversies came not at his own instance but at that of his correspondents.Less

Introduction

in The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to interpret Saint Jerome's career as a biblical scholar and Christian writer within its immediate historical context, in the ... More

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to interpret Saint Jerome's career as a biblical scholar and Christian writer within its immediate historical context, in the last decades of the fourth and the first decades of the fifth centuries. Jerome himself, seen through the lens of his own writings, is be the focus of attention. Taking advantage of progress in the historiography of the period, and of innovations in the history of scholarship in general, it proposes new interpretations of Jerome's scholarship that promise to remove enduring obstacles to understanding this major figure in the Western tradition. The chapter then discusses changes in the Roman world that created a new Roman culture; the emergence of Christian commentary on scripture; a brief biography of Saint Jerome; and studies of Jerome's scholarship.Less

Jerome in a Dress

Robert Mills

in Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages

The Introduction begins by analyzing a miniature in the Belles Heures of Jean de Berry, which relates the legend of how Saint Jerome is subjected to a practical joke in which he mistakenly ... More

The Introduction begins by analyzing a miniature in the Belles Heures of Jean de Berry, which relates the legend of how Saint Jerome is subjected to a practical joke in which he mistakenly cross-dresses as a woman. This striking image is used as a touchstone for evaluating the relationship between gender variance and sexual dissidence in medieval and modern cultures, and the role played by visibility in shaping that relationship. When is a mode of gendered presentation, such as cross-dressing, a code for something libidinal, and when is it not? Does the visible undoing of Jerome’s “gender” have anything to say about his “sexuality”? Does it resonate with the sexual or gender identities of the book’s readers or patron? The discussion of the Belles Heures miniature builds to an overview of the book’s central themes: visibility, politics, and sodomy; the logic of sequence and motifs of secondariness; the significance of a gender-comparative analysis; questions of terminology; and the role played by translation in sodomy’s entry into the field of vision.Less

Philosophy and Simplicity: The Problem of Classical Education in Early Christian Biography

Samuel Rubenson

in Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity

This chapter focuses on the issue of education in early Christian biography. It analyzes eight biographies of several saints including Life of St. Antony, Life of St. Paul the Hermit, and De vita ... More

This chapter focuses on the issue of education in early Christian biography. It analyzes eight biographies of several saints including Life of St. Antony, Life of St. Paul the Hermit, and De vita Gregorii Thaumaturgi. The analysis reveals that out of the eights live discussed, all but two inform us about the education of the saint and these were in the works of Saint Jerome and Gregory of Nyssa.Less

Epilogue

in The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship

This chapter discusses the internal dynamics of Jerome's cultural program and evaluates its larger historical, or even intellectual, significance. Everything that Jerome did, thought, and wrote was ... More

This chapter discusses the internal dynamics of Jerome's cultural program and evaluates its larger historical, or even intellectual, significance. Everything that Jerome did, thought, and wrote was shaped by the tension between the classical literary culture of the imperial elite, and the ascetic Christian focus on the Bible that emerged in its shadow. Others in his day articulated similar tensions in different terms. Some of them were more influential than Jerome. Nevertheless, Jerome's life and work, viewed as a cultural program, impresses upon the observer a sense of coherence, even monumentality.Less

The Black Swan: Two Orations for Ermolao Barbaro (1453)

in Complete Writings: Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, Orations

Isotta Nogarola, an Italian-born French author dedicated two orations to Ermolao Barbaro when he came to Verona as the city's bishop in 1453, the first of these an encomium congratulating him on his ... More

Isotta Nogarola, an Italian-born French author dedicated two orations to Ermolao Barbaro when he came to Verona as the city's bishop in 1453, the first of these an encomium congratulating him on his new appointment. Although she again pays tribute to his full panoply of Roman virtues—his gravitas, prudentia, magnanimitas, iustitia (gravity, prudence, magnanimity, justice)—what she now emphasizes is the forty-three-year-old cleric's severity and his extraordinary and, she implies, the joyless diligence in his studies. The second oration, in praise of Saint Jerome, explicitly addresses the citizens of Verona and is clearly a public oration delivered in Verona in 1453 shortly after Barbaro took office. In the first third of the oration, she stresses two qualities of her own—obedience and humility—as her motivation in accepting Barbaro's charge. She lauds the exceptional virtue of “true humility, which is obedient not to its own but another's will.”Less