Scenicas Meretriculas!

 It is interesting to see the resurgence of the personification that we saw in Prudentius’ Psychomachia. There it was the virtues and in Boethius we see the personification of philosophy. Although the absence of bloody killings of vices is unfortunate, Philosophy still maintains a hostile attitude. Philosophy talks about the need to deal with the pessimi and much of that discussion is filled with battlefield vocabulary. Philosophy talks about being defended (muniti) and contests (certamen) as well as attacks (grassandi). The beginning of this work is structured as both a defense of philosophy, but also the need for philosophy to defend itself from those who would doubt it or attack it. It will be interesting if this sort of dialogue continues on for a greater period. I also just have to bring up the line because it is the best line thus far, “Quis, inquit, has scenicas meretriculas ad hunc aegrum promisit accedere”. Philosophy wants no itty bitty stage prositiutes from messing with her neophyte. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. 

The Perseverance of Plato

When I first started reading this work, I was surprised at how classically philosophical it is.  For a author writing at the end of 5th and into the 6th century AD, I am surprised that Boethius is so clearly attempting to preserve Greek philosophy. Naturally I can see how Plato's maxims could certainly be appropriately incorporated into Christian literature, I am just always surprised when an late author, particularly one this late, decides to so blatantly include connections to the classical world. The overall tone of the poem reflects Boethius' current predicament when he wrote it, that is he was imprisoned for treason against Theodoric the Great, for which he would eventually be executed. He describes how evil can exist even in a world which is ruled over by God, and that through these sufferings, happiness will be obtained after death. The clear Platonic undertones makes this work less Christian to me, more simply a work written by a man who is a Christian but who is not writing a strictly Christian work. Perhaps this is why I was so surprised that this work was so prolific following its publication, at a time when Christianity was so much at the forefront in Rome. I also feel a very clear connection once again to Cicero and it is interesting that this certainly seems to be an almost theme for us throughout the semester for pretty much all of the authors we have read. Perhaps that is why I had such a difficult time with this author, particularly in relation to the metered portions.

This certainly the first time I have ever come into contact with a work that combines both meter and prose, and I find that it makes for a very choppy translation process.  I felt as though just as I was falling into a rhythm for one style, he switches and I have to reconfigure by process in my mind. I can't say I particularly like this style and I am still a little unsure to what end Boethius decided to alternate in such a way. I just hope that I can eventually get into a groove as I translate more, but I am not sure that I could get used to this style.

Cloak without seams:

John 19. 23-24

The soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took up his garments, which they divided into four shares, one share for each soldier. They took up his cloak, too, which was without seam, woven from the top throughout; 24 so they said to one another, Better not to tear it; let us cast lots to decide whose it shall be. This was in fulfilment of the passage in scripture which says, They divide my spoils among them; cast lots for my clothing.[4]

A seperate sense of self

For the reading for this week, I'd like to focus on a specific phrase that we have seen a couple times now in Jerome's letters; namely exteriorem hominem or as I've seen it mostly translated as 'the outer man' or 'outer self'.  First and foremost, it is worth noting that despite addressing the young Eustochium, Jerome's choice of phrase makes her outer self masculine, rather than something like exteriora ipsa or exteriora se.  Because of this, I wonder if Jerome is attempting to depict this outer self as something baser or diminished from the pure spirit contained inside.  He certain acknowledges that one of the aspects of the human spirit is the extreme ease with which it loves (difficile est humanam animam non amare), even if it attaches onto objects or desires of a blasphemous nature. Thus, I wonder if this 'outer being' is also represented in the same light, as Jerome acknowledges that this is the part that can be most subject to physical desire.  I also wonder if this particular phrase is acting on a preexisting tradition in earlier Christian thought, as I was able to track down the phrase later in St. Aquinas' writings on St. Paul Principale enim in homine est mens taionalis scundarium autem est natura sentitiva et corpoarlis quorum primum apostolus nominat interiorem hominem secundum exeriorem. Also, in Augustine, quia ut haec terra visibilis exteriorem hominem nutrit et continet, ita illa terra invisibilis interiorem hominem. Therefore, this distinction seems to have been widely known

A One Trick Pony?

The more I read Jerome, the more I feel as though he is obsessive to a fault over a few very specific topics.  He have only read two (bits of two) letters from Jerome and I feel like he is almost a one trick pony.  He discusses virginity, he discusses wine, he discusses gluttony and fasting, but rarely do we run into anything in his writing that he generally does not connect to one of these topics in some way.  The more read of him the more I find myself thinking "OK we get it, sex bad, wine bad.....".  I get that he is likely trying to really impress upon his readers just how bad these things are, but I feel as though once you have beaten a dead horse perhaps it almost comes full circle and simply makes people all the more curious about them.  He even focuses on specific body parts in his writings, speaking of knees, bellies, and faces specifically more than others, and generally attributing the same descriptive adjectives with them each time, in "paling faces", "weak or broken knees", etc.  He also seems to tend to hone in on specific stories and examples for each of his pet peeves, to the point where he repeats himself, likely in an effort to add weight to his doctrine but instead he seems to me to almost provide scanty proof.  I just find myself getting the end of each reading chunk and thinking "well I've heard all this before, is this really all you've got?" I wonder perhaps if Eustochium had a similar reaction.

Virtuous and unvirtuous business

I was struck in this reading by the establishment of virginal virtue versus those who pretend to be virgins.  The very concept of virginity and its antithesis, carnal pleasure, is often viewed in the context of a commodity, but one on a purely spiritual level.  Jerome's language seems to delve occasionally into that of a merchant or businessman as he relates how the agapetae (interesting connection back to the Greek rather than the Latin) delve into carnal transaction (habeat carnale commercium) and how he describes Blesilla, on account of her husband's death, only possessing a minor reward or pay (minorem continentiae habere mercedem).  Naturally, this concept of business is equally echoed in Jerome's explicit comparison of these women with prostitutes.  As Jerome received a large amount of backlash for his own enterprises relating to the wealthy and aristocratic Roman women with whom he associated, to the extent that he was driven out of Rome, I wonder if this was the same sort of argument that his detractors used against the Saint himself.

Double standard chastity

Jerome, as always, is very tactful in his approach to women who are no longer virgins. The discussion of men committing fornication and women are very different. The men are portrayed almost as being led astray and the women are portrayed as very fully being aware of the extent of their mistake. It also placed basically all blames of pregnancy on women and essentially freed the man from all blame. The example of men that Jerome presents are all men who had sex in unmoral ways and it is not the loss of virginity that , but for the discussion of women it is a blanket statement about their behavior. Also the discussion of widows being fortunate because they can reassert chastity was rather cruel and weird. Jerome also provides no male discussion that is equivalent to this discussion of women.  

Whining about wine.

The discussion of wine drinking by Jerome provides a closer view at the thought process concerning alcohol. Jerome starts with the discussion that wine is used by the devil to cause the young to fall into the sin of sensuality. He goes so far as to assert the wickedness of wine over several other sins. But what is puzzling is that Jerome goes from talking about wine’s lust-inducing nature to examples of male inebriation. It would seem more profitable to discuss perhaps the effect on women. But perhaps he does not want to give examples of bad women to Eustochium and the main figure of the anecdotes being male might also make the discussion less scandalous. Inebriation is touched upon with regards to Noah, but the discussion primarily seems to conclude that if you drink wine, you will commit fornication. It is interesting how much time Jerome devotes to discussing wine, both good and bad qualities of it. Jerome mentions that even Paul recommended wine for stomach problems, but again limits the quantity to prevent others from giving into a weakness for alcohol. Jerome seems to presume an inherent desire for alcohol and drunkenness. From his discussion of Paul and Timothy it seems that Jerome concludes that Paul’s mention of a short amount is to keep Timothy from falling into error. He also seems to presume an inherent desire for it in Eustochium. It might be more telling of Jerome’s own psychology regarding inebriants than of human nature.

Jerome's abstract of letter 22:

desiderium desiderio restinguitur.

Anorexia as a virtue

Ad orationem tibi nocte surgenti non indigestio ructum faciat, sed inanitas.

Jerome having it both ways

After this week's reading, I'm even more intrigued by the use of rhetorical toys for the sake of argument. That is, one can pick up a topic, situation, or verse and spin it to make the point at hand. This is such a classical thing to do - squeamishness over internal consistency is more characteristic of our time. Perhaps some of it has to do with version control, but overall I'm accustomed to classical texts going for the "both/and" rather than the "either/or." Myths have various endings geared towards various morals, origin stories have various beginnings to emphasize various values, etc. Even in the works of one author, the "both/and" prevails. Tibullus gets his urban amor in the country, Seneca uses travel to illustrate iam the benefits of leisure reading iam the lack of leisure for reading, we could go on and on. In Jerome's letters, the very specific issue of a 7-month marriage is handled very differently at different times.

In letter 127, Jerome points out that Marcella was widowed after being married less than 7 months. She goes on to earn the highest honors of Christian widowhood, dedicating herself to chastity, hanging out with all the right kinds of virgins, even meriting an elaborate comparison with Anna. Blaesilla, on the other hand, was also widowed after being married approximately 7 months. She, however, must always play second fiddle to Eustochium, bearing cruces every day, yet reaping 60 instead of 100-fold. Jerome paints a woeful picture of Blaesilla, having missed out on virginity-for-life, and yet missing the pleasures of marriage for the rest of her dedicated virginity. These are two very different pictures of widowhood - one an example for all to follow, the other a cautionary tale for all to learn from. And they're not just any two widows - they had been widowed for the exact same amount of time, a very specific detail that Jerome needn't have included.

So, why the 7-month period? When I was reading letter 127, I thought Jerome picked out that particular detail so he could make his comparison with Anna all the more convincing. (He is careful to say less than 7 months, and then compare it to Anna's 7 years... could it have been 4 or 5 months?) But the appearance of the same 7-month marriage situation in another letter suggests something different. Could this be Jerome picking up a rhetorical toy, and bending it to his present argument? I thought in letter 127 he was doing the same thing with his quotes from Romans. Given the memorability of the strangely specific (and unusual, one would think) 7-month marriage turned widow, this seems even more like a pointed example of demonstration of rhetorical skill.

Now let me back-peddle a little bit. I'm not entirely convinced we can't chalk this up to coincidence. It is possible that Jerome didn't notice this 7-month situation appearing in such disparate contexts in his letters. Certainly he would have had a lot of time between the composition of each epistle, and I'm not sure how important consistency over such issues would have been to Jerome. Even if consistency was important to him, Miller's article, suggesting that Jerome's textualization of Eustochium's body was a failure, gives me a little bit of license to suggest that maybe this is simply an instance where all of Jerome's ideas simply aren't holding together. Ultimately I'm inclined to give Jerome the benefit of the doubt and treat this like a complex problem, rather than a lazy slip (lest I fall into that dreadful category of scholars who lament about how poor certain works are before they understand them).

But here's the kicker - the significance section to my unprecedentedly long blog post. Why is it that I'm intrigued by, amused by, impressed by, Seneca's both/and technique, but I'm disturbed by Jerome's? (Whether or not it's actually there in this case, the reaction itself still warrants discussion.) I think the issue has to do with the category of "necessary trustworthiness" Jerome falls into after translating the Vulgate. As with translating any sacred text, the transmission of "the original" becomes of utmost importance, and the role of the translator is usually minimized to the faithful conveyance of the source text. Whatever we think of Jerome's Vulgate translation (another issue entirely), I find it so interesting that I seem to have carried over my expectations for Jerome-the-Biblical-translator to Jerome-in-every-other-piece-of-writing. Jerome playing the game of rhetoric for his present agenda suggests that there were agenda that could have snuck into his translation, intentionally or not. Obviously the epistles and the Vulgate are categorically different, and we can expect Jerome to have treated them differently. But somehow I seem to have been influenced by this notion that since Jerome translated a sacred text, the stakes are higher for his general trustworthiness. Hence the squeamish feelings when Jerome misapplies a scriptural quote or turns on a dime from one argument to another about 7-month marriages. I don't think it's an appropriate reaction, but a culturally interesting one nonetheless - I think we've all seen Jerome and other church fathers idealized or censored in interesting ways. So the ultimate question for reception studies is, how can one work change the reception of and interpretation of later works? That is, how does a work allude to another work simply sharing an author?

Quality control

We've seen this line a couple of times now, using wine for the sake of the stomach and frequent infirmities. Jerome interprets this (1 Tim 5:23) as an exhortation to moderation, using wine only when medically needed. I have to ask - what was water quality like in Jerome's lifetime? Were people still getting these "frequent infirmities" because they weren't adding alcohol to their water as a purifier? Was water quality an issue when Paul was writing?

This all seems unlikely to me. But I'm looking for a solution to understand the way Jerome goes on to quote Romans, when Paul says it's not good to drink wine or eat meat. The whole context of the passage is Paul arguing that it IS ok to drink wine and eat meat (sacrificed to idols, specifically) if the Christian has a clear conscience, since "the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking this or that." It's only not ok to drink wine and eat meat in the company of Christians who still feel conflicted about it, lest they sin by going against their conscience.

Obviously we can understand why Jerome is against drunkenness. But it seems like he pulls this quote way out of context to make a point. Is it simply to serve his rhetorical argument? It reminds me of the way Seneca can pick up little toys of speech, as it were, to illustrate whatever point he is currently making (traveling, for example, is at one point good for the scholar to get reading done, and at another point bad for the scholar because its bumpiness and dirtiness doesn't allow reading). It is effective, though. In his series of examples of wine being bad I almost forgot about that little story (sarcasm) of Jesus turning water into wine...

Intertextuality of Biblical Proportions!

(Yes, pun intended.) In reading the rest of Ep.22, I stumbled upon a translation from New Advent. The editors took on the monumental task of citing every Biblical reference - not just direct quotes, but even phrases that recalled key passages. As you might imagine, I initially found it very distracting and nearly moved on to another translation. But then I got really interested:

Jerome's level of intertextual density in this letter (if all these references are good) is off the charts. But what I find interesting, aside from the sheer quantity of allusion, is how tangential some of the connections are from one quote to another. Even if his logic connecting passages wasn't always clear to me, I really got the sense of a thematic meditation, as if Jerome were letting his thoughts flow from one bit of scripture to the next in a real-time performance. He's so well-versed in scripture, so to speak, that his thoughts and his quotations become a patchwork that is nearly impossible to sort out one from the other. I think it's similar to the style of preaching that Augustine sets out - an extemporaneous performance that is a mix of exegesis and quoting Christian truth directly (or sometimes not so directly), from scripture.

What I would like to see is a text of Ep.22 marked up with all of Jerome's allusions to classical texts. (New Advent ignores them. For shame.) I'd like to compare the way Jerome weaves classical and distinctly Biblical language together with the way he weaves his own language and distinctly Biblical language together. Sounds like a job for someone who works on Tesserae... Do they also blend together? Can we see the process of naturalization happening on the syntactic level? What a boon for Jerome to bring a text-based religion to bear on a culture already soaked in the tradition of intertextuality!

Jerome's "Blazing Body"

OK, where do I start....the Miller article was quite eye opening into just how sexual Jerome's Letter 22 really is.  I find the entire premise of trying to transform the body of Eustochium through writing very interesting and I particularly enjoyed the little bit about Jerome's failed attempt to do this same for himself.  I like that he instead moves onto speaking of dreams and memory, which we all know was so prevalent in late Latin literature. I found it most interesting (and amusing) that in trying to remove and advise against base human sexual desire, Jerome actually makes it all the more desirous both to himself and likely to others. But he was doomed from the very beginning, because, although he mentions that once something is obtained or possessed, the desire is gone, but I must disagree with that conclusion.  In fact, I submit that once you have experienced something really amazing, you want more and more of it, kind of a "you don't know what you are missing until you try it," which naturally would then make you want more.  So you are a bit damned if you do and damned if you don't, because apparently simply thinking about something sinful is a sin itself, which just takes the fun out of everything!  I think Jerome should have considered the idea of moderation, it may have things easier for him (but probably not less sinful ;) ).

I also want to make a quick note about something that actually strikes me every time I read anything Christian in nature.  Jerome makes mention a number of times about the fact that Eustochium is the bride of God.  Bride naturally implies marriage and the natural occurrences after which, things that are not in association with virginity.  But Eustochium lives in a paradise of virginity, thus never being able to enjoy the perks of marriage with her would-be husband, God, thus making the entire premise something that when dwelt upon (as I am sure happened with the spare time they had) further added to the frustration of desire that Jerome attempts to get to the bottom to.  I just find the word choices and metaphors that were employed to be something that maybe should have been thought through a bit more, maybe making the whole desire things less desirable........maybe!

The Song of Songs

Here is a link to the Song of Songs, a text that permeates the Letter to Eustochium.

Trouble near and abroad

I was struck by the metaphorical and, perhaps in some cases, literal representation of the heresy spreading abroad.  First of all, although these disturbances are grouped under a single event (turbo, tempestas), I wonder if all of the events fall under a single heresy or whether there are individual and different unorthodox beliefs emerging in different provinces (as Jerome does mention in his provinciis).  Although he gives examples of those that he presumably observed in Rome (the blasphemous translation of peri archon, the teachings of the Pharisaeians), presumably other heresies abounded abroad.  Likewise, I was intrigued by the turbo mentioned in section 11 which caused a number of great shipwrecks should be taken purely at a metaphorical level or literal.  Apart from the bloody persecutions occurring on land, could the opposing factions of the heresies could have engaged in open naval warfare?

In Pomorum Custodiam

This is a curious phrase, indeed.  Jerome here seems to be quoting the Vetus Latina version of the Bible; he himself in one of his three translations of the Psalms (from the Hebrew)  translates it thus:

Deus, venerunt gentes in hereditatem tuam 
polluerunt templum sanctum tuum 
posuerunt Hierusalem in acervis lapidum
  According to Jerome, the Hebrew word lichim means a pile of stones; the Greek translation, opōrophulakion, "indicates a lookout such as warders of the fields and orchards were accustomed to have, so that of the extensive city, only a cottage was left."  (Jerome, Epist. 106)

an old bitch gone in the teeth

The thing that most stood out in today's reading was the sincerity of Jerome's grief over the fall of Rome. In Peter Brown's biography of Augustine, he contrasts the former's attitude with the latter's ambivalent see-sawing between dismay at the decline of classical culture and satisfaction at the deserved end of paganism. But Jerome is simply heartbroken, the best measure of which is his interweaving of biblical texts with Virgil. There was something almost modernist about the seamless combination of Christianity and classical literature to produce a lament for a dying civilization--one thinks of The Waste Land or Pound's "Who gave their lives for a botched civilization, an old bitch gone in the teeth." Deep feeling was the keynote of today's passage in general; the description of Principia's actions at Marcella's death was particularly moving. For all his bile, Jerome remains very much both a man of culture and simply a man.
(From Sam)

in pomorum custodiam

                I was rather confused by the phrase “Posuerunt Hierusalem in pomorum custodiam”. I was not entirely sure what it means that Jerusalem was set under the guard of apple trees. The surrounding context obviously shows that this is a list of evil events, but it caught me off guard seeing the phrase about apple trees. I thought that perhaps this was reference to the tree of knowledge and original sin and that by placing the holy city under guard of this symbol of sin would indicate the harm being done to the city. It also seems weird with the aggression of the surrounding statements such as “polluerunt templum sanctum tuum” or “posuerunt…carnes sanctorum tuorum bestiis terrae.” Or perhaps it is an oblique reference to Hesperides and the garden that is guarded by the dragon. I wasn’t sure and I couldn’t really find much in the way of information. But the oddity of the line struck me.  

The Last Act of a Mother

Although a brief mention is made in Section 13 about the sack of Rome by Alaric and Marcella's subsequent death, I particularly enjoyed the way Jerome described the scene.  At the arrival of the Goths to her home, Marcella pleads for the life of Principia, although not truly her daughter but in the true form of a mother pleading for the life of her daughter.  It seems to have worked because they arrive at the basilica of St. Paul, Marcella badly beaten but no mention is made of any harm to Principia (naturally with the help of God).  The tender scene of Marcella's death is, although sad, quite beautiful and serene, essentially passing on her duty to Principia. What I enjoy most about this scene is that I feel as though I get the first (although at the end) glimpse of Jerome's true sadness at the death of Marcella and how he grieves for Principia.  Up until now, I have felt curiosity and amusement at the descriptions Jerome has provided, making the situation seem almost as an episode of the "Real Housewives of Rome" who were sugar mommas for a bunch of poor little men.  Here I feel his sadness and I feel the type of woman Marcella was, willing to offer her own life to save that of another.  It changed my thoughts at that moment and I am in fact happy about that.

The Student and the Master

I wanted to continue John's discussion on the ambiguous idea of Marcella as a teacher.  In my personal opinion, at least with regards to the didactic aspect, I believe that Jerome believes that he himself is the teacher while Marcella is simply a student who adopts and cherishes his ideals, although I do agree with John that the framing of this concept is ambiguous, perhaps deliberately.  While Jerome praises the aspects of Marcella that would make her a good student of the Christian faith (persistence (industria), virtue (virtus), character (ingenium), and purity (puritas), I personally could not find anything in particular in the Latin that depicted her as a teacher in passages 6 and 7 (although I could have missed it).  Certainly, she exemplifies the ideas of Jerome's faith and does seem to express her own opinions at times (7.10-11 sic interrogata respondebat ut etiam sua) which may be indicative of teaching, but I think, either for the emphasis on Christian doctrine that he cites as well as the current state of the Church, there is a stronger emphasis on her devoted following of Jerome's ideals.
And I can definitely see how Jerome would have been seen as a cult leader at this point!

Marcella the teacher?

                In section 7 it becomes doubtful whether Marcella is teaching her own opinion or not and if Jerome is praising her for teaching. Jerome acknowledges that she knew the precept, women shouldn’t teach, but claims that she gave her own opinion not by saying it was hers, but rather by claiming it was Jerome’s or another male instructor.  It seems ambiguous whether or not Jerome is praising her for breaking that precept against female teachers. Jerome later talks about how she claimed that he was a student of the things which she taught, thus seeming to imply that she can get around not teaching by claiming she is simply passing on the teachings of others. I don’t have a completely clear idea of the situation I feel. But I just was struck by the praise-like tone that seemed to be coming from Jerome over a violation of an apostolictic  saying.

Ladies and their Sensitivites

Naturally, Jerome's discussion on the possessions and material wealth (as well as to some rather questionable personal traits) reminded me (in addition to several songs from Sweeney Todd) of the stark contrast of the Christian ideal of asceticism and particularly that surrounding the author's personal teachings.   At this point in the Western Roman Empire, while Christianity has emerged as the dominant religion, the frequent barbarian attacks and loss of territory must have caused a severe impact on the economy.  Thus, imported pearls and clothes must have been only accessible to the highest of families and these seem to be the target of Jerome's scorn.  Indeed, I was amazed to discover that Marcellae's case was not the only Roman aristocrat that Jerome converted to his ascetic ways, and while most of his followers, along with the teacher himself attained sainthood, there is at least one example, a senatorial woman of Rome named Blaesilla, who perished because of her asceticism.  I wonder how Jerome was viewed in Rome during his time period in Rome prior to all of the later blessings and whether his conversion of several prominent members of Roman society would have been seen as a noble pursuit in light of the contemporary religious situation or as a devious act.

Virgines Stultae

       It is interesting how Jerome includes in his argument the part of the sermon on the mound in which thought and action are construed as one and the same. The tint of the letter seems to rest more on the virginity of the spirit rather than virginity of the flesh. It reduces the condescending nature of his tone and give the letter more of a precautionary slant. Jerome seems to be less worried that she will literally lose her virginity and more that she will allow her mind to deviate from the precepts of God and the ideals of Jesus. However, he does not include or discuss the aspect of that same part of the sermon on the mound where Jesus says that it is better to remove the offending member of the body than to lose ones soul. Imaginably the intended would know the following part, but it is interesting that Jerome doesn’t make that explicit. I think that because Jerome is linking the ill-fated lust to the mind, rather than Jesus’ attribution to the eye or other more immediate member of the body, that such type of self-mutilating talk would be inappropriate for the context. It would seem that Jerome is rather sermonizing that one should avoid such thoughts or ideas because there isn’t a way to make up for such thoughts. His quote that “there is insufficient supply of good virgins” would further imply that there is not a way to come back from these thoughts. Jerome does say, after all, that there is no way for God to recoup women who have lost their virginity, and since looking with lust at someone is the equivalent to losing virginity, there is no way for a woman who has looked with lust on a man to regain that lost spiritual virginity. Jerome, at the end of section 5, makes it clear that there is no difference as far as virginity is concerned between spiritual (i.e. lustful thoughts) and physical defloration. 

Steeped in the Bible (from Sam)

The thing that most struck me about Jerome's letter was its effortless interweaving of biblical texts, more as a kind of mental vocabulary than a system of citation. The closest classical analogues I can think of, Plato and Plutarch, while possessed of a similar command of poetry, usually use it for explicitly argumentative purposes. While Jerome does plenty of this, the texts are more striking as an organic outgrowth of his thought process. There's a great passage in one of Garry Wills' books on Augustine about similar verbal echoes in the Confessions, which makes me wonder to what extent this is a common intellectual heritage of Patristic/early Christian authors--one already sees something similar happening in Paul, who often thinks in Psalm quotes even when it doesn't have any bearing on his point. Another point Wills makes about Augustine is that the text he would have had at his mental fingertips was the Vetus Latina rather than Jerome's Vulgate, which he remained mildly ambivalent about precisely because he was so steeped in the earlier translation. Which prompts the question of whether Jerome's citations in his letters are of the earlier Latin translation or his own.

Saints Writing about Saints

I instantly felt a different feeling when I started reading Jerome's work.  As I continued, although there are clear similarities which Katie has pointed out between the other works we have read and this one, I could sense a significant difference that I feel may be necessarily attributed to the fact that unlike Sulpicious for example, this is an example of a saint writing about another saint.  I sense a familiarity in Jerome's writing, which naturally could be attributed to the fact that Jerome was well acquainted with Marcella, clearly noted in the line "...ut melius iudicarem tacere inpraesentiarum quam nihil dignum illius laudibus dicer."  However, I wonder if the familiarity can also be attributed to the fact that Marcella belonged to the same walk of life as Jerome.  This is not simply a work being written about an illustrious person by a third party author, but instead by a person who shares the same values and teachings as the individual about whom he is writing.  In fact, Principia need demand so often the work about Marcella, since it would seem too sad an undertaking for Jerome if he were to write about her due to this familiarity.  This being said, I was struck by the thought that perhaps Jerome extolled Marcella's praises to such a degree because he was fond of her and knew her as a friend.  Is his praise unbiased?  Then I remembered that this is a letter, a different medium than we have encountered thus far in this class, which is specifically directed to a person, Principia, who personally knew the good deeds of Marcella.  I wonder if the same familiarity would be present in a work that was not so personal, i.e not a letter to a specific individual, and how much faith a reader would place in the doings (miracles?) of this individual in a work written by a saint about a saint who is likely biased towards the extolling of such an individual's good deeds.