The Blazing Body

Eustochium, daughter of Jerome’s beloved student and friend Paula, was an adolescent girl who had already dedicated her life to asceticism, and particularly to perpetual virginity. Jerome accomplishes the transformation of Eustochium’s physical body into a metaphorical body by way of tropes from the Song of Songs. Jerome’s choice of the king’s bridal chamber and the enclosed garden as images that articulate Eustochium’s body leads directly to the other set of images from the Song of Songs to which he appeals. Jerome chose to move toward ideality by reconfiguring the female body as a text that could mediate between the flesh and God. Interestingly, Jerome made one attempt in the letter to textualize his own body by using a female metaphor from Scripture. The space of Jerome’s letter to Eustochium consists of oddly juxtaposed passages in which the presentation of Eustochium’s idealized body gives way to Jerome’s presentation of his own body

Art · Art history · Asceticism · Theology · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Philosophy