The Letters of Jerome

Datos Bibliográficos

ID23765684
AutoresAndrew Cain (0000-0002-8820-140X, autor de correspondencia)
Año2009
Fecha de publicación2009-03-01
Open AccessNo
TipoBOOK
RevistaThe letters of Jerome (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199563555.001.0001
OpenAlexW2489135354
ISBN9780199563555
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas16

In the centuries following his death, Jerome was venerated as a saint and as one of the four Doctors of the Latin church. In his own lifetime, however, he was a severely marginalized figure whose intellectual and spiritual authority did not go unchallenged, at times not even by those in his inner circle. His ascetic theology was rejected by the vast majority of Christian contemporaries, his Hebrew scholarship was called into question by the leading biblical authorities of the day, and the reputation he cultivated as a pious monk was compromised by allegations of moral impropriety with some of his female disciples. In view of the extremely problematic nature of his profile, how did Jerome seek to bring credibility to himself and his various causes? This book answers this crucial question through a systematic examination of Jerome's idealized self‐presentation across the whole range of his extant epistolary corpus. Modern scholars overwhelmingly either access the letters as historical sources or appreciate their aesthetic properties. The book offers a new approach and explores the largely neglected but none the less fundamental propagandistic dimension of the correspondence. In particular, he proposes theories about how, and above all why, Jerome used individual letters and letter‐collections to bid for status as an expert on the Bible and ascetic spirituality.

Appearance of impropriety · Art · Art history · Asceticism · Extant taxon · Literature · Political science · Reputation · SAINT · Scholarship · Spirituality · Theology · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Classics · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Theology and Canon Law Studies