Against Jovinian and Ascetic Responsibility

chapter 8 Against Jovinian and Ascetic Responsibility

In 384 Jerome wrote a letter praising Blesilla, the daughter of his friend and pa- tron Paula. Recently recovered from a serious illness, Blesilla had subsequently converted to ascetic Christianity.1 This letter is part of Jerome’s attempt to cul- tivate a circle of patrons in Rome.2 When Jerome writes of Blesilla’s asceticism he emphasises the power of words to affect the material world:

She smelt somewhat of neglect and lay in the tomb of the world bound by the bandages of wealth, but Jesus roared, dismayed in spirit, and cried out, saying: “Blesilla, come out!” Having been called, she has risen and come out and eats with the Lord. … She knows that she owes her life to the one to whom she has entrusted it … [When she was ill] what reme- dies were there from her kindred, what words all lighter than smoke? She who has died to the world and who lives again in Christ owes nothing to you ungrateful relatives.3

Blesilla was already a Christian, and here her conversion to asceticism is inter- woven with the story of Lazarus from John 11–12, linking her life to this biblical model of sanctity.4 Throughout his stay in Rome and during his subsequent time in the East, Jerome showed how literary production – the reading, writ- ing, supplementing, and discussion of material textual artefacts – constituted the lived ascetic Christian life.5 Once again, in this letter to Marcella, the move to ascetic Christianity derives from the gospel text; it is a literary product.

1 Ep. 38.2. Jerome terms this a conuersio: Hier. Ep. 39.1 (csel 54.295.6-7): Secura esto, mi Blesilla, confidimus; probas uera, quae dicimus: ‘numquam est sera conuersio’. 2 Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 74–76. 3 Hier. Ep. 38.2 (csel 54.290.8-16): redolebat aliquid neglegentiae et diuitiarum fasciis con- ligata in saeculi iacebat sepulchro, sed confremuit iesus et conturbatus in spiritu clamauit di- cens: Blesilla, exi foras. quae uocata surrexit et egressa cum domino uescitur … . Scit se uitam suam ei debere, cui credidit … Ubi tunc erant auxilia propinquorum, ubi uerba omni inaniora fumo? … Nihil debet tibi, o ingrata cognatio, quae mundo periit et Christo reuixit. 4 Derek Krueger, “Typological Figuration in Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s Religious History and the Art of Postbiblical Narrative,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5, no. 3 (1997). 5 Jerome never explicitly says that Blesilla was a Christian before her decision to adopt asceticism. It is readily inferred, however, from the various statements he makes to moderate Christians in Ep. 38–39 (e.g. Ep. 38.2 (csel 54.290.16-21): Ubi tunc erant auxilia propinquorum,

In this extract, words and their repetition become the means to articulate the Christian life in opposition to other forms of social life. Blesilla’s commit- ment to the Christian life begins as a response to the call (clamauit) of Christ, an obligation that Jerome describes by contrasting debt (debeo) and trust (cre- do). This model of debt, obligation and due responsibility is verbal, constituted by Christ’s call and the framing of Blesilla’s illness and conversion as a Lazarean resurrection. This verbal rebirth is contrasted with the ministrations of Blesil- la’s family, who offer words that are dismissed as being ‘lighter than smoke’. Blesilla’s mortal crisis is positioned as a moment of transition from a life struc- tured according to the uerba of her kindred and relatives into a life founded as a response to the obligation Christ’s roar has placed her under. Words are produced by and for relationships of obligation and Blesilla turns to the one to whom she is obliged (debeo), leaving behind those who are ungrateful. In his commentaries on Paul, his hagiography and his work in Hebrew, Jerome presented the Christian life as constituted in and as a response to the obligation deriving from an encounter with Christ in biblical reading. As this extract makes clear, however, late antique people already understood their place in society as framed by obligation to their family and household. One of the things made in Christian reading are new responsibilities and obligations, and in the late Roman world, this meant a new society. Blesilla died a few months after this letter was written.6 Jerome commemo- rated her in a letter of consolation to her mother that also serves to buttress his spiritual authority.7 This letter recounts the hostility expressed towards the ‘de- testable monks’ by bystanders at the funeral as the death of this young wom- an incited anger among those suspicious of Jerome’s actions.8 Having spent a large portion of his letter insisting that Blesilla stood with Christ, he concluded that ‘in my books she will never die. She will hear me talking of her always, with her sister, with her mother.’9 Blesilla was a product of Jerome’s words, either written (as a living exegesis of the Gospel) or spoken in conversation. Jerome’s literary production, always key to his role in the city, was the means

ubi uerba omni inaniora fumo? Nihil tibi debet, o ingrata cognatio, quae mundo periit et christo reuixit. qui christianus est, gaudeat; qui irascitur, non esse se indicat christianum.) where the implication is that Blesilla had been one of them. 6 Cavallera, Saint Jérôme, 1:23; Fürst, Hieronymus, 162; Kelly, Jerome, 98 n.33; Rebenich, Hieron- ymus, 164 n.137. 7 Feichtinger, Apostolae Apostolorum, 103. 8 Ep. 39.6 (csel 54.306.10-12): Quousque genus detestabile monachorum non urbe pellitur, non lapidibus obruitur, non praecipitatur in fluctus? 9 Ep. 39.8 (csel 54.308.19-20: … numquam in meis moritura est libris. Audiet me semper loquen- tem cum sorore, cum matre.