Education, Reading and Asceticism in the Letters Of

Home , Jerome, Pammachius, Philip Schaff

The “Bookish” Jerome: Education, Reading and Asceticism in the

Letters of a Fourth Century Monk

Rebecca Thompson Advisor: Dr. Andrea Sterk Senior Honors Thesis Spring 2010 Acknowledgements

First and foremost I would like to thank my amazing boyfriend, Damian, for putting up with me for the last year that I have spent working on this project. For all the late nights, all the days of procrastination and the breakdowns where I thought “I just can’t do this,” you were there for me and I thank you for that. Secondly, I would like to thank my parents, especially my dad who called me every day, multiple times a day during the end of the writing process to give me words of encouragement and love because he knew I could do it. I would like to thank my friend Gene, without him I would have felt so much worse about the struggles of writing a thesis and I took great comfort knowing that he was in the same position as I was. Really, I would like to thank all my friends who supported me during this process and kept calling even though I always told them, “I can’t go out tonight, I’m working on my thesis.” Finally, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Andrea Sterk, who first approached me about the prospect of writing a thesis and guided me through the ups, downs and bouts of indifference that seem to be part of the writing process.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction: Jerome’s Anti-Ciceronian Dream 3

2 Early Christianity and the Book 5

3 Historiography 9

4 Christian Leaders and Pagan Literature 10

5 A Biography of Saint Jerome 14

6 Jerome’s Letters: Writing about Reading 18

-Jerome and Religious Texts

-Jerome’s Defense of Secular Literature

-Jerome and Rufinus: A Debate Revisited

7 Conclusion: The Anti-Ciceronian Dream Revisited 33

Bibliography 35

Suddenly I was caught up in the spirit and dragged before the judgment seat of the Judge; and here the light was so bright, and those who stood around were so radiant, that I cast myself upon the ground and did not dare to look up. Asked who and what I was I replied: “I am a Christian.” But He who presided said: “Thou liest, thou art a follower of Cicero and not of Christ. For ‘where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.’”1

I. Introduction: Jerome’s Anti-Ciceronian Dream

So wrote Saint Jerome in letter 22 in which he describes his famous anti-Ciceronian dream in which he is confronted by the Judge and swears to abandon those “books of men” which he had previously so cherished.2 In his writings, Jerome not only commented on much of the extant Biblical texts and authored numerous accounts of hagiography; he also revealed his own complicated feelings towards his pagan education. In letter 22, Jerome interrupts his advice to Eustochium on how to live as a proper Christian virgin in society to relate an account that happened “Many years ago, when for the kingdom of heaven’s sake I had cut myself off from home, parents, sister, relations” in which Jerome experiences his supposedly seminal anti-

Ciceronian dream.3 The elder Jerome reflects on his younger self, admitting “I still could not bring myself to forego the library which I had formed for myself at Rome with great care and toil. And so, miserable man that I was, I would fast only that I might afterwards read Cicero.”4

Jerome, for all that he was a Christian still could not abandon the teachings of the pagan

1 Jerome, Letters and Select Works trans. William Henry Freemantle, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace vol. 6, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 22.30.

2 Ibid., 22.30.

3 Ibid., 22.30.

4 Ibid., 22.30.

philosophers from his youth. So tormented is he by this internal division between secular and scared that he falls into a near-coma and dreams of his confession as a Ciceronian and that “He

[God] had ordered me to be scourged—I was tortured more severely still by the fire of conscience, considering with myself that verse, “In the grave who shall give thee thanks?”5

Jerome’s inner conflict as a man with two masters, classical and religious, manifests itself as physical suffering and intense moral turmoil; in his dream Jerome is literally beaten until his

“shoulders were black and blue” because the divine Judge is so displeased by Jerome’s love of

Cicero and Plautus.6 Until punished by the Lord, Jerome could not escape the influence of

Hellenism. Ultimately Jerome swears, “’Lord, if ever again I possess worldly books, or if ever again I read such, I have denied Thee.’”7 Upon awakening from his dream Jerome declares “that thenceforth I read the books of God with a zeal greater than I had previously given to the books of men.”8 This dream suggests that by the middle of the 370s, during his stay in northern Syria,

Jerome had received and then rejected a classical education; however, neither Jerome’s letters from the 370s nor those written later in his life show a complete rejection of his background in the classics.9 Though Jerome is not the only example of a Christian theologian dealing with conflicted feelings about his pagan past, his account of his dream of judgment is certainly the most well-known.

5 Ibid., 22.30.

6 Ibid., 22.30.

7 Ibid., 22.30.

8 Ibid., 22.30.

9 Robert Payne, The Fathers of the Western Church, (New York: Viking Press, 1951) 91.

This passage illustrates the Jerome that everyone is familiar with, a man educated in classical rhetoric and philosophy but tortured by his dependence on it. Written in the 384, over a decade after the event it describes was meant to take place, Jerome’s account of his dream has been debated by historians for generations with some positing that the dream was a historical reality while others held that Jerome used it with artistic license to make a point.10 Either way, for those who do not study the early Christian book, Jerome’s anti-Ciceronian dream is a marker of the relationship between early Christians and the book: early Christians, as Jerome’s letter suggests, wished to distance themselves from the classical heritage that bequeathed to them the skills of grammar and rhetoric which they themselves used in their own works. The relationship, as historians for the last twenty years have sought to show, between early Christians and the book is a lot more complicated, less black and white, than a cursory reading of this and other letters would suggest. An examination of Saint Jerome and his complex relationship with books, both secular and religious reveals the nuanced connection between Christianity and the book as it emerged in the first to fifth centuries. Furthermore, Jerome’s letters reveal his hopes for an educated, elite Christian intellectual, the sort for which he himself is the best representation.

II. Early Christianity and the Book

If history is merely the study of events that “have been,” in the interest of understanding

“what is” and “what will be,” where then does one place the history of ideas? How does one study the effects of thoughts and feelings? Ideas, thoughts, philosophies exist only in the

10 For a recent reading of this passage see Megan Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship, 25-27. Additionally, one may turn to Neil Adkin, Jerome on Virginity: A Commentary on the Libellus de Virginitate Servanda (Letter 22) for a complete commentary on the letter.

thinker’s mind, with no material existence beyond words on a page. And yet, these beliefs of right and wrong, these value systems that are just words have formed the foundation for the saga of human history. Humanity’s actions do not exist in a void; every action occurs as the culmination of one’s life experiences, informed by what one has been told. The question then arises of where these experiences, the collective memory of human existence are stored. The answer, ironically enough is in books where actions are recorded and remembered through words. In books historians and laymen alike use the media of pen and paper, now keyboard and printer, to document the sum of humanity’s successes and failures. For the Western World, we children of the Greco-Roman tradition, this means our actions are the products of the spread of

Christianity from East to West and back again. Christianity, despite the wars fought in its name and the holidays held in its honor—that is to say despite its material presence—first found substance as a religion of the book.

The first issue then is how to address the relationship between early Christianity and the written word. Historians of the previous generation sought to show that early Christians were not only exceptionally literate, but also that Christianity functioned as an institution interested in the spread of literacy. Early Christians turned out to be no more and no less literate than their contemporaries, with the literacy rate among Christians affected by the same factors of education and social class as their pagan counterparts.11 That is to say, literacy was almost entirely restricted to the upper 10 percent—those who had the time and money for an education—with

“the likely overall illiteracy level of the Roman Empire under the principate is almost certain to

11 Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 3.

have been above 90 percent.”12 Furthermore, for all that early Christians valued the written word and the ability to read it, “the Church, while it could change the religion of the Roman world, and even the morals of the people, could not create a new educational system.”13 Instead as

Christianity spread in the pre-Constantinian era, its leaders sought to limit the exposure of its followers to the corrupting influence of pagan texts. Jerome addresses this issue in many of his letters where he advises his audience, both specific and general, on how to read secular literature.

In Ancient Literacy, William V. Harris argues that in some cases Christianity actually retarded the spread of literacy as it removed its followers from the tutelage of grammarians who were

“permeated with paganism.”14

Though Christianity did not explicitly lead to the spread of literacy, it certainly popularized the use of the codex, a precursor to the modern book, over the traditional papyrus scroll. Though no source overtly states the reason for this Christian preference, it has been hypothesized that Christians needed texts to be more mobile and stable as they were used to spread the true version of Christian doctrine. Early Christianity used these easily transportable texts as a “fixed point” which allowed its leaders to ensure that the Christianity spread around the world adhered to their beliefs.15 Even then these written texts were only actually read by a small minority, the learned few who read the texts and then transmitted them orally for the illiterate masses.16 It is these learned few whom Jerome imagines as the ideal candidates for his prudens

12 William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 22.

13 James Westfall Thompson, Ancient Libraries (London: Archon Books, 1940), 41.

14 Harris, 302.

15 Ibid., 221.

16 Gamble, 29.

lector; they were educated and leisured enough to read and comment upon religious texts and to communicate within the religious community.

Additionally, it is difficult to argue that a “not-especially-literate” Christianity, one that feared and hated its pagan predecessors, actively preserved pagan texts in the pre-Constantinian era. In fact, as Christianity began its aggressive takeover of the Roman world, many founts of classical knowledge were lost as pagan libraries were sometimes found in temples that were destroyed by Christian edicts.17 By keeping their students away from the influence of Roman grammarians, infected as they were with pagan ideas, Christians undermined the tradition of

Roman education. Christian interest in pagan texts was inversely related to Roman persecution of

Christians, for as persecution waned Christians became more open to the ideas of classical thought. The Christian aversion to pagan texts, though not fully overcome, was a phenomenon of the pre-Constantinian era as later generations of Christian leaders from St. Augustine in the West to St. Jerome in the East saw some value in pagan texts.

A further issue to consider in the relationship between Christian and pagan texts lies in the way Christianity turned the word into the Word of God. While Christianity certainly set a standard as a religion of the book, it also drew on the custom of Jewish reverence for text and

“the Greco-Roman tradition of awe” for the written word.18 For the Christian leaders of the first and second century, freshly drawn from the Jews, there was the idea that the word connected

Christians directly to God. As John the Apostle wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the

17 Thompson, 40.

18 Harris, 300. 8

Word was with God, and the Word was God”.19 For Christians then, the Word of God, even if it was not read by all formed a key part of religious doctrine.

III. Historiography

The above summary of the relationship between early Christians and the book grows on a growing body of literature that approaches the issue from two different but related ways: the first utilizes a technical approach that focuses on the physical transformation of books and libraries in the first through fifth centuries while the second group approaches the same relationship by examining the intellectual accomplishments of Christian thinkers during the same era. The first group includes Harry Gamble and Kim Haines-Eitzen, both of whose work has proved invaluable to understanding the tangible transformations that books and libraries underwent during this time. The second class of scholars is composed of William Harris, Robert Kaster,

Anthony Grafton and who many consider to be the father of modern studies in late antiquity,

Peter Brown. Though collectively these men and women have produced volumes of works, few have been able to focus on a single historical personage as so much work had to be done to establish the field of books in late antiquity.20 Only in the last few years, as evidenced by the books in the bibliography, have academics been able to turn their attention to individuals, building a bridge that connects biographical work with a new arena in intellectual history. This

19 John 1:1 (New International Version).

20 Unfortunately, Megan Hale Williams just published a book discussing Jerome’s relationship with books and the intellectual cultural during his lifetime. Luckily, it is a slim volume that leaves a lot of area to be discussed for future academics and instead focuses almost exclusively on the tension between Jerome’s asceticism and the worldliness of his immense, expensive library.

paper seeks to place itself as one of those bridges connecting an individual, in this case Jerome, with the books and literary society that has recently come under so much study.

IV. Christian Leaders and Pagan Literature

Before investigating the Jerome’s complex relationship with secular literature, it is necessary to analyze the connection between other, earlier Christian leaders and pagan texts. As

Harris and other historians have pointed out, Christians in the first and second century prided themselves on the fact “that Peter and the other apostles were uneducated”.21 This claim stems from Acts where the author describes the apostles as “unschooled, ordinary men” removed from the Roman power structure and therefore uncorrupted by pagan teachings.22 Christians in the following two centuries idolized this model of illiteracy, believing that all knowledge could be obtained through quiet contemplation with God thus rendering any further education unnecessary. Though the relationship between Christianity and literacy during this time was complicated, a few leaders recognized the value of at least the ability to read. As Tertullian states, “We come together to read the divine writings, to see if the nature of the present time requires us to look there … We nourish our faith with these holy words”.23 Though this statement does not specifically express levels of Christian literacy or the necessity for all

Christians to be literate, it nevertheless shows that some level of literacy would not be misplaced.

It also reveals that Tertullian, an early Christian author from the second century, possessed both the ability to read and write and he had colleagues who could read his writings. Clearly

21 Harris, 302. See also Gamble, 21-42.

22 Acts 4:13 (New International Version)

23 Tertullian, Apology, in Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity, ed. A.D. Lee (New York: Routledge, 2000), 37.

Tertullian was writing for his fellow Christians, setting an example for them by showing how he and his fellows relied upon the written word for divine inspiration.

Despite the fact that Tertullian is only one man, his status as an educated man and a

Christian illustrates a new trend in Christianity that developed during the second century. As

Christian converts began to include those members of the elite who were “well educated and conversant with Greco-Roman literary and philosophical traditions” the religious texts gradually adopted the form and style of Greco-Roman writing.24 This does not mean that Christianity explicitly incorporated aspects of pagan belief into its doctrine; rather it shows how those educated few who joined the movement used their talents for the betterment of the Christian cause. Whether these men (and a very few women) used their talents by writing theological treatises, building schools and libraries, or distributing their wealth among the poor of the

Christian community, the elite and their resources were there to stay. However, the inclusion of the formerly pagan elite, removed from Hellenism by a generation or less, created new problems for early Christians leaders and the way they dealt with pagan texts—having decided that literacy was acceptable, the Church fathers in the following centuries would have to decide what material proved acceptable reading.

From the third to fifth centuries, as Christianity moved from a persecuted sect to become the religion of the Roman Empire, many of its early leaders came from a liberal arts background which had exposed them to the tenets of Hellenistic philosophy and science.25 Again, we can turn to Tertullian, who was both learned and a Christian, for advice on this matter. Having stated

24 Gamble, 41.

25 Konstantinos Sp. Staikos, The History of the Library in Western Civilization vol. 3, From Constantine the Great to Cardinal Bessarion trans. Timothy Cullen and David Hardy. (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2007) 54.

that schoolmasters are inherently tainted by idolatry, Tertullian then addresses the issue of the corrupting influence of pagan texts:

I know it can be said: ‘If the servants of God are not allowed to teach letters, they will not

be allowed to learn them either’ and ‘How could anyone be educated in everyday human

wisdom or taught how to think and behave, since letters are a tool for every part of life.

How can we reject the secular studies without which divine studies are impossible?’26

By admitting that “letters are a tool for every part of life”, Tertullian places Christianity in the context of the larger Greco-Roman world where an education is essential to social and political advancement. Instead of reacting to pagan texts with fear and shame, Tertullian reminds his readers that a strong background in the faith will protect students from the corrupting influence of paganism while allowing them to study the liberal arts. In this way Tertullian simultaneously strengthens Christian claims about the power of their God while allowing Christians to partake in the greater Greco-Roman world of literature and philosophy. Though Tertullian by no means promotes pagan texts, he acknowledges the impact knowledge of them can have on the life of a young Christian. As Kaster puts it, Tertullian stresses that pagan literature be approved in form

“but their content be rejected, with a warning” of its corrupting influence.27

Tertullian’s “stringent puritanism”, representative of the Church in the West finds a direct contrast in Origen.28 While Tertullian viewed pagan literature and education in traditional schools as necessary evils, Origen himself was the product of a mixture of secular and religious

26 Tertullian, On Idolatry 10, in Early Latin Theology: Selections From Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Jerome, trans. and ed. S.L. Greenslade, vol. 5, Library of Christian Classics (London: John Knox, 1956), 93.

27 Kaster, 77.

28 Ibid., 74.

education. Eusebius reveals that Origen, early Christian scholar and theologian, was given a

“liberal education” along with his training in the “Divine Scriptures” while still a boy. However,

Eusebius adds “First of all, before being inducted into the Greek sciences, he drilled him

[Origen] in sacred studies”.29 The fact that Origen’s father instructed him in both a liberal education and the Divine Scriptures suggests that in the second century Christian parents were instructing their children in both the secular and divine. Instead of limiting their children to a religious education, parents like Origen’s father gave their children a complete education. Such an education was necessary in the classical world, especially for children of the elite or the ambitious, as a liberal education marked one’s wealth and one’s potential.30 Though Origen would later give up his personal library that included pagan works, he nonetheless founded a library and school in Caesarea that included in its curriculum aspects of pagan philosophy along with education in Christian doctrine.31

The aforementioned dependence on a liberal education was exploited by Emperor Julian in 362 when he issued a law forbidding Christians from teaching pagan texts, here defined as anything written by non-Christian and therefore pagan authors.32 This edict, passed one hundred years after the death of Origen, highlights the idea long held by historians that Christianity was hostile to the pre-existing Roman educational system, with its emphasis on pagan authors and

Hellenistic philosophy. Julian, a Hellenophile, believed that he could drive Christians out of

29 Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace vol.1, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994) 6.2.7-9.

30 Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 73.

31 Eusebius, H.E. 6.3.8-9.

32 A.D. Lee, ed., Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity (New York: Routledge, 2000), 102.

places of scholastic authority if he insisted that all teachers believe in the gods of the writers who they were teaching. Julian found “it absurd that these who interpret the writings if these men do not honour the gods whom the authors revered” and that schoolmasters “should first of all emulate their reverence for the gods.”33 Ironically, this view that teachers must share the religious perspective of the authors they teach is expressed by Tertullian nearly two centuries earlier. Both Julian and Tertullian believe the Christian teachers have no place in the traditional

Roman educational system, placing the parents of Christian children in the difficult position of choosing education or religion.

However, in the two centuries between Tertullian and Julian, many Christians had learned to tread the line between secular and scared, thus making Julian’s decree largely ineffective. Yes, Christian teachers stopped teaching the classics and the children of Christians continued to attend pagan-run schools, but Christian children still got the religious education they needed at home and from the Christian community at large. One example of this is found in

Socrates’ Ecclesiastical History as he describes the work done by the two Apollinares, where the former:

composed a grammar consistent with the Christian faith … translated the Books of Moses

into heroic verse … paraphrased all the historical books of the Old Testament … He

purposely employed all kinds of verse, that no form of expression peculiar to the Greek

language might be unknown or unheard of amongst Christians. The younger Apollinaris

33 Julian, Letter 61c, in Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity, ed. A.D. Lee (New York: Routledge, 2000), 103.

… expounded the gospels and apostolic doctrines in the way of dialogue, as Plato among

the Greeks had done.34

Here one sees how educated Christians were able to take their pagan education, their knowledge of Greek grammar and rhetoric, and use it for the Christian cause. Christianity existed as part of a learned heritage; it was passed on orally and through texts.

V. A Biography of Saint Jerome

As a man who lived over fifteen hundred years ago, finding exact bibliographic information about Saint Jerome is a difficult task. Even determining the exact year of his birth is difficult as various sources ranging from The Catholic Encyclopedia to J.N.D. Kelly’s landmark work Jerome: His Life, Works and Controversies give the dates as 340-342 or 331 respectively.

Most sources, however, agree that he was born at Stridon in Dalmatia to reasonably wealthy parents.35 The wealth of his parents is important to note as it explains why Jerome was able to leave home as a teenager in order to travel to Rome where he studied grammar and rhetoric under the tutelage of the pagan grammarian Donatus.36 Following his studies with Donatus,

Jerome would have begun courses at a rhetorician’s school where “young men read the canonical orators and learned to produce and present sample speeches”.37 This education in pagan

34 Socrates, Ecclesiastical History trans. A.C. Zenos, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace vol. 2, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 3.16. 35Louis Saltet. "St. Jerome," The Catholic Encyclopedia 8 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910), http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08341a.htm.

36 Elizabeth Kaschins and Jane Kemp. “Saint Jerome, the Patron Saint of Libraries,” Library Journal 113, no. 14 (1988), 135.

37 Megan Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 7.

literature, in the form and structure of classical philosophy and rhetoric would influence Jerome for the rest of his life. Not only did he learn the basics of reading and writing from a pagan teacher, he also learned how to think and reason from the great classical philosophers of the

Greeks and Romans.38

Jerome’s letters reveal that during this time he began to build his pagan library, assumedly the one referenced in letter 22 that he forced himself to abandon, composed of the likes of Cicero and Platus.39 This early library, which would later prove so much trouble, is the foundation upon which Jerome based many of his future writings. Though there is not time here to mention all the ways Jerome would draw on pagan texts in his later years, the works found in this early library are alluded to in both form and content throughout Jerome’s life. Another important part of Jerome’s experience as a student in Rome was that it was during this time, around approximately 360, that Jerome was baptized as a Christian.40 Here one sees the seeds of

Jerome’s future role as a bridge between pagan philosophy and Christian theology in the boy sent to Rome for an education who also happened to become a Christian.

After receiving the best pagan education that a boy from a relatively wealthy family could receive, Jerome traveled to Trier where he started his theological studies.41 It is important to note here that Jerome, though he had completed a philosophical study based on the classical tradition, believed his education to be incomplete. Instead of beginning a career in Roman

38 Recently the assertion that Jerome learned Greek at this young age has come under debate, for while he certainly read the works of Greek philosophers, he may have only done so in Latin translations. For more information on this debate turn to Williams, 35.

39 Raschins, 135.

40 Robert Payne, The Fathers of the Western Church (New York: Viking Press, 1951), 91.

41 Saltet, 1.

politics, which is what his parents probably intended when they sent him to Rome for school,

Jerome left behind any success in the secular arena to begin studying the tenets of Christianity.

While there he encountered other Latin Christians, who accompanied him in his travels around eastern Christendom as he searched for a connection to the ascetic lifestyle he wished to pursue.42 Eventually Jerome settled for several years (374-379) in Antioch, where he became acquainted with the Christian East, the Holy Land and the origins of ascetic Christianity. In pursuit of this ascetic lifestyle, Jerome spent some time living in a cave outside of Antioch in the desert of Chalcis where he lived as an ascetic monk. As his letters reveal however, though

Jerome lived on a plain diet of bread and water, he nevertheless continued to read and keep up his literary output.43 It was during this time that Jerome began to envision a distinctly Christian intellectual culture, one that drew upon but was distinct from the classical culture that preceded and influenced it.

Jerome lived for some forty years after this period until his death on September 30th in 420, traversing the Mediterranean world from Antioch to Constantinople on to Rome and back again to the East until he eventually settled in Bethlehem in 386. During the thirty-four years that

Jerome lived in Bethlehem, he wrote extensively, including works of hagiography, epistles that crisscrossed much of the ancient world, and commentaries. Jerome’s literary output was supported by a series of wealthy patrons who gave him the funds and therefore the leisure to develop his intellectual dreams.44 One of his most important patrons was a wealthy Christian

Roman noblewoman named Paula who paid for the building of a monastery, a convent headed by

42 Williams, 28.

43 Raschins, 135.

44 Gamble, 139.

Paula, a hostel for pilgrims and even a school for boys.45 It was at this monastery that Jerome’s personal library was firmly established, becoming a fixed point of reference for much of

Jerome’s work.46 The library’s collection, as painstakingly reconstructed by Williams, was composed of three categories: biblical manuscripts that were the foundation to Jerome’s scholarship; works, both exegetical and not, by other Christian writers; and finally, volumes of pagan—Greek and Roman—texts that included the likes of Plato, Cicero and Virgil.47

Despite living over fifteen hundred years ago, as a saint and a Doctor of the Church, along with Saint Augustine, Saint Ambrose and Pope Gregory, Jerome has a legacy that continues to this day. School children are told of the incredible tale of Jerome and the lion in which Jerome removes a thorn from the lion’s paw, causing the lion to become ever after his friend and protector. It is for this reason that libraries, of which Jerome is the patron saint, often have lions guarding their entrances. Jerome spent nearly twenty years of his life translating Psalms and the

New Testament into Latin from the Greek original.48 Jerome’s new version of the Bible, known as the Vulgate and completed in 404, was the Bible of Western Christianity until the

Reformation.49 He also corresponded with other early Christian leaders, notably: Ambrose,

Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa and Rufinus. His promotion of an ascetic lifestyle influenced the monastic system of the middle ages and his deference to Episcopal authority supported the power

45Gérard Vallée, The Shaping of Christianity: The History and Literature of Its Formative Centuries (100-800), (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 183.

46 Gamble, 175.

47 For a full accounting of Jerome’s library at Bethlehem, see Williams, 147-166.

48 Vallée, 183.

49 Saltet.

of the Roman pontiff.50 For the historian, particularly for this historian, Jerome’s letters provide countless depictions of people and everyday life during a transitional period in history that prove to be invaluable.51

VI. Jerome’s Letters: Writing about Reading

By examining his countless letters, one is able to see Jerome’s various opinions about creating and reading religious works, about the value of a secular education, even for women, and about his own conflicted relationship on the use of pagan texts. Jerome’s letters will be dealt with first according to the aforementioned groups, and then placed in chronological order within those groups. Where possible, readings have been done first in English and then compared to the original Latin. No Latin, however, will be cited here as it interrupts the reading for those who do not read Latin and because this is not a paper interested in the issue of translation. Though the last fifteen hundred years have afforded ample opportunity for scholars to read and re-read

Jerome’s letters, each generation comes to Jerome with their own questions and concerns.

Current scholarship, with its new emphasize on the intellectual culture of late antiquity, has actually chosen to focus on the relationship between early Christianity and the book, which places this paper on trend.52

50 Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 243.

51 Gamble, 132.

52 For an example from a historian from the previous generation, i.e. books written before the 1980s, see Walter Woodburn Hyde, Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire (New York: Octagon Books, 1970).

Jerome and Religious Texts

Though it may seem strange to focus on Jerome’s advice on reading in an era where less than 10 percent of the population was literate, and less than that was literate and Christian, this is nevertheless a worthwhile endeavor as it focuses on an issue near and dear to Jerome’s mind. As his reputation suggests, Jerome was a man who loved books and learning and reading and writing so it makes since that many of his letters focused, even peripherally, on the written word.

Whether it was asking for copies of volumes to be made for his library, or advising wealthy patrons on how to read the Gospels, Jerome’s letters contain ‘bookish’ elements that are difficult to ignore. Additionally, Jerome’s letters provide information about the levels of literacy, the circulation of books, and means of copying books during the fourth and fifth century. Combining the information Jerome reveals about himself with what he reveals about early Christian intellectual culture in general makes his 150 remaining letters invaluable. The letters in this first section focus on Jerome’s opinions on religious texts and how they were different from secular literature, concluding with a series of letters that show Jerome’s advice on how to read the

Scriptures.

One of Jerome’s earliest letters, written in 374 to his friend Florentius, reveals one aspect of Jerome’s bibliophilic nature as he requests that Florentius provide him with “the commentaries of the reverend Rhetitius … the explanation of the Psalms of David, and the copious work on Synods of the reverend Hilary”.53 These texts, while no longer familiar today, were in Jerome’s time essential to augmenting the “volumes of the sacred library” already in his possession.54 This reveals not only that Jerome already owned a library filled with sacred texts,

53 Jerome, letter 5.2.

54 Ibid., 5.2. 20

but also that he was not satisfied with what he had. Jerome’s assumption that Florentius will be able to provide him with the requested texts reveals the level of book circulation that occurred during the fourth century—Jerome, rather than despairing that he will never read his missing texts, knows that finding the copies he desires is just the matter of a simple request and a lengthy wait. Even Jerome’s correspondence with another learned Christian, though Florentius is largely forgotten by history, illustrates the extent of an early Christian intellectual movement. Books then, like letters, were used to connect the far flung followers of Christianity in spite of their physical separation.55

Jerome then explains why he himself cannot fulfill this request, saying “For I am no longer free to follow my own wishes.”56 This makes Jerome’s request an interesting one for it implies that though Jerome has removed his body to an isolated monastery, he still allows his mind to rove free by means of his trans-Mediterranean letters and his obsessive reading. Jerome, for all that his physical self is removed from society, still has an active voice, an active pen that partakes in early Christian intellectual society. In some sense Jerome’s self-imposed isolation in

Bethlehem and the ascetic lifestyle is a role created by him as his asceticism extends only to his body, not to his mind or his pen. Furthermore, Jerome’s letter reveals that he is in possession of

“pupils devoted to the art of copying” who he offers to employ in the copying of texts that

Florentius does not have.57 The expense of having copyists, even student copyists, and the cost associated with their tools of paper, ink, pens and candlelight belies Jerome’s claim to be living

55 Williams, 234.

56 Jerome, letter 5.2.

57 Ibid., 5.2.

in complete isolation, unable to secure the above texts for himself.58 This difference between the monk, meant to live in simplicity and isolation, contrasts with the Jerome found in a close reading of his letters, the more so because it is an image that Jerome self-consciously strives to present himself. This man, like the one presented in his anti-Ciceronian dream, is a being drawn between the virtues of Christian piety and the insight afforded by an intellectual culture based on the classics.

Another letter written in 374, this time addressed to Paul of Concordia, follows this vein of requesting an exchange of texts even as their owners are separated by a sea that must be sailed across to deliver “all kinds of eastern merchandise.”59 Unlike the previous letter, however,

Jerome includes in this letter explicit references to a classical thinker, in this case to “Tully

[who] in his brilliant speech on behalf of Flaccus describes the learning of the Greeks as “innate frivolity and accomplished vanity.’”60 The fact that Jerome was familiar with Cicero is not surprising—Jerome would have read Cicero as part of his education in Rome—what is surprising is that Jerome uses a Roman orator to criticize their shared Greek past. By using a quote in which

Cicero elevates himself and his fellow Romans above the Greeks, Jerome elevates himself over

Cicero and his fellow pagan Romans. Jerome subtly creates a hierarchy based on learning, with the Christians at the top, followed by the Romans in the middle with the Greeks at the bottom.

The difference, Jerome implies, lies in the religious nature of educated Christians; learned

58 For an examination of the expense of scribes and related costs, see Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

59 Jerome, letter 10.3.

60 Ibid., 10.3.

Christians were inherently better than their Roman and Greek forefathers because their learning flowed from God.

Contrariwise, the rest of Jerome’s letter suggests that the artistic merits of classical Latin outweighs the simple Latin preferred, even required, by Christian readers. In exchange for the texts that Jerome requests from Paul, he promises to send his newly written account of the life of

Paul the hermit. Of the writing of this account, Jerome admits “I have taken great pains to bring my language down to the level of the simpler sort. But, somehow or other, though you fill it with water, the jar retains the odor which it acquired when first used.”61 The implication of this statement is that Christian readers require Latin of a simpler sort than Jerome is used to or even prefers. The metaphor at the end suggests that Jerome’s first style of writing, that writing learned while a student in Rome under Donatus, has been infused with distinctly classical characteristics that he cannot escape. Even when writing about the humble life of Paul the hermit, Jerome has a tendency to write in the high style of an orator like Cicero instead of editing his writing for the sake of his audience. That Jerome even needs to simplify his writing suggests his high level of education and innate literary talent as well as the literary limits of early Christian society. If

Jerome wanted to reach the widest possible audience he could not use precepts learned while a boy in Rome, instead he must create a uniquely Christian language open to all.62

Jerome himself expresses this same idea some twenty years later in 393 or 394 when, in a letter to Pammachius, he writes:

61 Ibid., 10.3.

62 Frances Young, “Classical Genres in Christian Guise; Christian Genres in Classical Guise,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres and Andrew Louth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 252.

Once more, you must not in my small writings look for any such eloquence as that which

for Christ’s sake you disregard in Cicero. A version made for the use of the Church, even

though it may possess a literary charm, ought to disguise and avoid it as far as possible;

in order that it may not speak to the idle schools and few disciples of the philosophers,

but may address itself rather to the entire human race.63

In this letter one sees Jerome drawing a comparison between the ‘eloquence’ of Cicero and the small writings that he himself writes. There is something in Cicero, here emblematic of classical literature as a whole, which is lacking in the religious treatises Jerome pens. Church writings may only have ‘literary charm’ incidentally, not purposefully as that would defeat its goal of reaching ‘the entire human race’. In speaking of ‘idle schools and few disciples of philosophers’

Jerome marginalizes the importance of the classical tradition, setting it aside as something that must be replaced by the philosophy of Christianity. This sentiment, however, exists in a paradox as not only were Christians who read educated by reading the classics, much of Christianity drew on philosophical concepts.64 The ‘small writings’ that Jerome refers to could not exist without the classical authors from which he wishes to distance himself.

Before turning to Jerome’s advice on a secular education, an examination will be given to a set of two letters from Jerome to Paulinus, bishop of Nola, in which Jerome uses the metaphor of travel to describe the proper way to read the Scriptures, including references to the dangers

63 Jerome, letter 49.4.

64 For discussions on the incorporation of classical philosophy into Christianity see, Wendy E. Helleman, ed., Christianity and the Classics: An Acceptance of a Heritage (Lanham: University Press of America, 1990); Christopher Snead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Everett Ferguson, ed., The Early Church and Greco-Roman Thought (New York: Garland, 1993); A.H. Armstrong, Hellenic and Christian Studies (Brookfield, VT: Gower Pub, 1990); Helen Rhee, Early Christian Literature: Christ and Culture in the Second and Third Centuries, (London: Rutledge, 2005).

inherent in traversing a field where Christian texts often has surprising similarities to pagan ones.65 The first letter, written in 394, directs Paulinus in his study of the Scriptures by providing him with close readings of two Testaments in which Jerome provides both detailed accounts of their contents and the lessons that may be learned from them. Before beginning his commentary however, Jerome opens his letter by presenting the learning process of the pagans as something to be emulated by Christian readers such as Paulinus. Here, Jerome explicitly divulges that he himself has read classical texts, something he alternatively denies or attempts to hide in other letters66, and even makes an example of those men of old who traveled in pursuit of knowledge:

We read in old tales that men traversed provinces, crossed seas, and visited strange

peoples, simply to see face to face persons whom they only knew from books. … Plato,

besides visiting Egypt and Archytas of Tarentum, most carefully explored that part of the

coast of Italy which was formerly called Great Greece. In this way the influential

Athenian master with whose lessons the schools of the Academy resounded became at

once a pilgrim and a pupil choosing modestly to learn what others had to teach rather

than over confidently to propound views of his own.67

By sharing this anecdote with Paulinus, Jerome highlights his own familiarity with pagan texts, expressing respect for the ‘Athenian master’ who followed his intellectual quest across the seas, just as Jerome’s letters cross the seas as they travel from sender to recipient. The use of ‘we’ suggests that Jerome is not the only one who is familiar with these tales, implying that Paulinus

65 Catherine M. Chin, “Through the Looking Glass Darkly: Jerome Inside the Book,” in The Early Christian Book, ed. William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran (Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 101.

66 See Letter 22. 30.

67 Jerome, letter 53.1.

would also recognize the stories about Plato’s travels. Instead of being something to abandon, in this letter Jerome presents pagan thinkers as men to be emulated.

Letter 53 continues by describing Christians who followed the precedent set by their pagan predecessors in traveling the world to hear “Spoken words [which] possess an indefinable hidden power, and teaching that passed directly from the mouth of the speaker into the ears of the disciples is more impressive than any other.”68 In this case, however, Jerome stresses that

“the true wisdom must destroy the false;” meaning that the righteousness of Christianity, even the righteous ignorant, must replace the learning of pagans.69 Being an educated pagan is nothing compared the enlightenment endowed by the Lord that comes with being a Christian and contemplating the scriptures. Jerome illustrates this point when he says, “How many there are today who fancy themselves learned, yet the scriptures are a sealed book to them, and one which they cannot open save through Him who has the key of David”.70 Though Jerome admits that

“the knowledge of grammarians, rhetoricians, philosophers, geometers, logicians, musicians, astronomers, astrologers, physicians” possess skills that are useful to man, their knowledge is nothing compared to an understanding of the Scriptures.71

Jerome returns to his “learning as traveling”72 metaphor as he says “in the holy scriptures you can make no progress unless you have a guide to show you the way.”73 Catherine M. Chin

68 Jerome, letter 53.2.

69 Ibid., 53.4.

70 Ibid., 53.5.

71 Ibid., 53.6.

72 Chin, 103.

73 Jerome, letter 53.6.

describes the problem of individual interpretation without a guide in terms of Jerome’s own traveling metaphor, saying the problem is “simply that the paths into the projected utopia may be mapped very differently by different readers.”74 Jerome even disparages those

persons who, like myself have been familiar with secular literature before they have come

to the study of the holy scriptures. Such men when they charm the popular ear by the

finish of their style suppose every word they say to be a law of God. They do not deign to

notice what Prophets and apostles have intended but they adapt conflicting passages to

suit their own meaning, as if it were a grand way of teaching—and not rather the faultiest

of all—to misrepresent a writer’s views and to force the scriptures reluctantly to do their

will.75

Here Jerome returns to earlier statements made in letters like 49 above where he contrasts the polish of pagan texts with the raw truth of Christian ones. He warns against being swayed by those who use ‘the finish of their style’ and ‘force the scriptures reluctantly to do their own will,” asserting that being able to read the Scripture does not mean that one has learned them. A reader only learns the text with the guide that Jerome mentions, otherwise they are likely to become lost in the wilderness instead of comfortably ensconced in a Christian, literate utopia.

Jerome makes further comparisons between biblical and classical texts in the following sections of the letter as he counsels,

Let not the simplicity of the scripture or the poorness of its vocabulary offend you; for

these are due either to the faults of translators or else to deliberate purpose: for in this

way it is better fitted for the instruction of an unlettered congregation as the educated

74 Chin, 109.

75 Jerome, letter 53.7.

person can take one meaning and the uneducated another from one and the same

sentence.76

This passage suggests that, in contrast, classical texts are complex in content and rich vocabulary with an artistry that surpasses their Christian counterparts. However much biblical texts may suffer artistically in comparison to their corresponding classical texts, Jerome argues that this perceived flaw is actually a merit as it opens up Christian texts to a larger audience. Unlike philosophy and rhetoric, limited as they were to the elites, Christianity was something meant to be accessible for everyone. As Mark Vessey puts it, Jerome, in attempting to outdo his classical predecessors, “generalized the principle, conceiving of an entire ‘anti-literature’ based on

Scripture.”77 Vessey’s term ‘anti-literature’ describes precisely what Jerome is trying to do— establish a “new ‘biblical’ literary persona” whose merits were exactly the opposite of everything found in the classical literary tradition.78

Jerome’s second letter to Paulinus, written in 395, continues this trend of comparing

Christian texts to their pagan predecessors. In one section Jerome catalogues his fellow Christian writers, presenting both their virtues and their flaws, which Jerome suggests could be overcome if only they paid more attention to the Scriptures. Jerome condemns Tertullian’s writing as

“packed with meaning” but with a “rugged and uncouth” style, while Cyprian’s writing “like a fountain of pure water flows softly and sweetly, but, as he is taken up with exhortations to virtue and with the troubles consequent on persecution, he has nowhere discussed the divine

76 Ibid., 53.7.

77 Mark Vessey, “Jerome and Rufinus,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres and Andrew Louth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 320.

78 Ibid., 321.

scriptures.”79 These two men, leaders of the early Christian church in their own right, suffer in

Jerome’s portrayal of their writing because they are imperfect in either style or content. Even though “Hilary gains in height from his Gallic buskin; yet, adorned as he is with the flowers of

Greek rhetoric, he sometimes entangles himself in long periods and offers by no means easy reading to the less learned brethren.”80 From this evidence one sees that Jerome’s ideal Christian writer “is not an imitator of biblical forms, any more than, strictly speaking, he is an imitator of classical forms.”81 Instead Jerome’s ideal writer is an interpreter who bases his writings exclusively on the Bible, without claiming any style or artistry for himself.

Jerome’s Defense of Secular Literature

Just as the previous section established that Jerome and his contemporaries were familiar with pagan texts, so this section will show how Jerome explains and defends the use of pagan texts in his letters. It is important to note the dates for the letters in this and the previous section as it reveals that not only did Jerome continue to peruse Cicero and the like, but also that he used in them in his own writing even after the episode of his anti-Ciceronian dream. Clearly, within

10 years of his supposed denouncement of his classical library, Jerome had returned to the foundation of his education and was reading the classics as he saw fit. That is not to say, however, that he did so without being challenged about his pagan references by his contemporaries, including one Vigilantius who Jerome responds to in letter dated from 396.

Though Jerome spends much of the letter defending himself from charges of Origenism, one

79 Jerome, letter 58.10.

80 Ibid., 58.10.

81 Vessey, 321.

section speaks to use the appropriate use of pagan texts. In clearing his name as an Origenist,

Jerome maintains “that I read and have read Origen only as I read Apollinaris, or other writers whose books in some things the Church does not receive.”82 Just as reading pagan literature,

Jerome argues does not make a pagan, so does reading Origen not make one an Origenist and therefore and heretic. While Jerome admits “that there are things in them deserving of censure”, he contends that his duty is to “take up many writers that from the many I may learn many things; according to that which is written ‘reading all things, holding fast those that are good’.”83

This last line is a quote from 1 Thessalonians 5: 21-22: “But test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil” that Jerome uses again and again to explain his reading of secular literature.84 Jerome uses this exact quote again in the closing to letter 119 to

Minervius and Alexander, two monks of Toulouse in southwestern Gaul, when they ask his advice about two unrelated exegetical matters of interpreting the Scriptures. Jerome states “My manner of proceeding is to read the ancients, to test individual interpretations, to retain those that are good, and not to depart from the faith of the catholic church.”85 In this passage Jerome removes himself from the responsibility for the transmission of texts—instead of being an active author, he is merely a passive conduit who passes information on to those who may interpret it.

There one sees what Williams’ calls a “slippage” between the Jerome who acts as a humble instrument of the Lord and the Jerome whose superior literary skills place him above the rest.86

82 Jerome, letter 61.1.

83 Ibid., 61.1.

84 1 Thess. 5:21-22. Tertullian also follows the same principle in regards to reading pagan texts in his On Idolatry.

85 Jerome, letter 119.1-5. Williams, 239- I used Williams’ translation of this text as the letter found in the collection was an incomplete translation.

86 Williams, 239.

Even Jerome’s ability to read and write separates himself from the unassuming masses his texts hope to enlighten. The fact that Jerome presents himself in both these terms—ascetic monk and learned theologian—speaks to his role as a bridge between classical and religious intellectual culture.

In letter 70, written in 397, Jerome responds to the Roman orator’s Magnus question about Jerome’ use of secular quotes within his religious writings by turning first to a biblical teaching found in Proverbs where Solomon “charges us to understand prudent maxims and shrewd adages, parables and obscure discourse, the words of the wise and their dark sayings”.87

The pursuit of such knowledge, Jerome argues, lies in “the sphere of the dialectician and the philosopher” and not, therefore in the realm of a strict theologian. However, it is possible and perfectly natural for the two worlds to overlap in the case of religious discourse. Jerome further illustrates his point by referencing several instances in which Christians quote secular texts and heathens quote Christian texts.88 Among these are authors already referenced in this paper, such as Tertullian about whom Jerome asks “Can anything be more learned or more pointed than the style of Tertullian?” or Cyprian who writes “With what terseness, with what knowledge of all history, with what splendid rhetoric and argument”.89 Jerome uses these men, unassailable as examples of Christianity, as models which Magnus and other Christians can follow.

Though much of this paper has focused on Jerome’s advice to men and secular literature, one letter stands out as an example of Jerome’s advice to women on that subject. Written 403 to

Laeta, daughter –in-law of Jerome’s patron Paula, about the education of her infant daughter also

87 Jerome, letter 70.2. The passage to which Jerome refers is found in Proverbs 1:1-6.

88 Williams, 44.

89 Jerome, letter 70.5.

named Paula, letter 107 is the Jerome’s famous epistle detailing the education of a Christian girl.

The first bit of educational wisdom that Jerome imparts to Laeta instructs her in the best way to teach her daughter the Latin alphabet: “Get for her a set of letters made of boxwood or of ivory and called each by its proper name. ... And not only make her grasp the right order of the letters

… she may know them all by sight as well as by sound.”90 Jerome’s advice here is interesting as it not only suggests that Jerome has some experience teaching children to read but also that

Jerome is comfortable with the idea of female being equipped with the ability to read and write.

However, Jerome stresses that “the very words which she tries bit by bit to put together and to pronounce ought not to be chance ones, but names specially fixed upon and heaped together for the purpose” of learning more about Christianity.91 Jerome intends that Paula’s education, even at a young age, should be a mixture of grammar school basics and Christian truths. In the letter that Jerome writes about the education of this female children one sees the foundation for a new

Christian, one who is the uncorrupted product of education and Christianity.

As Paula grows up, Jerome recommends that she not be allowed to go into the world, saying instead “let them find her nowhere but in the shrine of the scriptures, questioning the prophets and the apostles on the meaning of that spiritual marriage to which she is vowed.”92

Here again, Jerome allows for a woman to be educated and to understand her place within the

Christian world that she has been born into. Paula’s education should also include the “task daily to bring to you the flowers which she has culled from scripture. Let her learn by heart so many

90 Jerome, letter 107.4.

91 Ibid., 107.4. Specifically Jerome suggests lists of the prophets, the apostles or patriarchs from Adam downwards.

92 Ibid., 107.7.

verses in the Greek, but let her be instructed in the Latin also”.93 Imagine, being a female educated in Greek and Latin, able to read and write in a time when less than ten percent of the population was literate. In some sense, Paula is only granted this gift because she is a Christian and therefore needs to be able to read and write so that she may thoroughly read the Scriptures and produce commentary of her own. Certainly pagan women, even wealthy ones, were not expected to contribute anything of literary merit, while Jerome’s instructions for Paula’s education clearly indicates that she has a future in that area. Interestingly, when it comes to what

Paula may read Jerome has a precise prescription for the order in which she must read the

Scriptures and he makes no mention of secular texts what so ever.94

VII. Conclusion: The Anti-Ciceronian Dream Revisited

Scattered throughout his correspondence, hidden amidst discussions on scholarship and comfort for the ill, Jerome’s letters reveal a man grappling with his unique position within a peculiar age. Jerome is more than the man who had an anti-Ciceronian dream and withdrew himself from the taint of pagan literature, he is a man composed of two competing yet complimentary educations. A random sampling of Jerome’s letters, no matter their intended message, reveals a man deeply concerned with the issue of reading and texts. Torn between his pagan education and his Christian faith, Jerome chooses to walk a thin line between the two as he expounds upon Christianity in the style learned by a youth spent reading the likes of Cicero. To

93 Ibid., 107.9.

94 Jerome’s concern for Paula’s education does little to belie his blatant sexism as his other guidelines restrict her to a life completely isolated from any physical pleasure, whether it be food, drink or clothing, what so ever. It is difficult not to feel pity for Paula, born into the life of a Christian dedicated to God as a virgin without ever having a choice for herself.

do so requires that Jerome remain mindful of “always appealing to the authority of scripture lest in a paschal treatise you should appear to have borrowed anything from secular sources.”95Jerome even suggests that reading secular literature is akin to a woman as he admires

“the fairness of her form and the grace of her eloquence” and desires “to make that secular wisdom” into “my captive and my handmaid.”96 A Latin Christian living in the heart of eastern

Christendom, a man educated in rhetoric and classical philosophy who became one of the four fathers of the Catholic Church, an ascetic monk with one of the largest personal libraries of late antiquity, Jerome is a threshold character who serves as a bridge between classical education and the then relatively new Christian religion.

95 Jerome, letter 99.2.

96 Jerome, letter 70.2.

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