Jerome (review)

This is a splendid book, which admirably meets its series' goal by being at once scholarly and popular (the epigraph to chap. 5 is Lennon and McCartney's "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away"). As might be expected from an ancient historian of Rebenich's bent and caliber, the work offers a significant reassessment of Jerome by placing a refreshingly novel emphasis on his social context. The book falls into three parts: Introduction, Translations, Bibliography. A brief review of this kind will serve the reader best by simply giving the titles of the eighteen sections into which the first two of these parts are subdivided: 1. "From Stridon to Aquileia: Between Career and Conversion"; 2. "Antioch and Chalcis: The Making of an Ascetic Champion"; 3. "Constantinople: The Formation of a Christian Writer"; 4. "Rome: High-Flying Hopes and Deep Fall"; 5. "Bethlehem (I): The Origenist Controversy"; 6. "Bethlehem (II): The Biblical Scholar"; 7. "The Novelist: Letter 1 to Innocentius"; 8. "The Theologian: Letter 15 to Damasus"; 9. "The Chronographer: Preface to the Chronicle of Eusebius"; 10. "The Epistolographer: Letter 31 to Eustochium"; 11. "The Satirist: Letter 40 to Marcella concerning Onasus"; 12. "The Biographer: The Life of Malchus the Captive Monk"; 13. "The Biblical Scholar: Preface to the Book of Hebrew Questions"; 14. "The Literary Historian: Lives of Famous Men"; 15. "The Translator: The Preface to the Vulgate version of the Pentateuch"; 16. "The Controversialist: Against Vigilantius"; 17. "The Threnodist: Letter 127 to Principia"; 18. "The Ascetic Expert: Letter 128 to Pacatula". It will be seen that the choice of translations shrewdly avoids the more hackneyed texts in favor of less famous but equally significant ones. These generally accurate and readable translations are accompanied by their own brief introductions and by substantial annotation: both are highly judicious. As might also be expected from this scholar, the very extensive bibliography evinces an admirable grasp of the secondary literature, which ensures that his commentary is throughout of superlative quality.

Some quibbles. The present reviewer is gratified to find himself credited on page 169 with a forty-three-page article. However, he is obliged to make the sheepish confession that the piece in question is a mere three pages long: for "433-76" read "433-436." In Jerome's description of the attack of fever preceding his famous dream Rebenich (p. 8) follows Fremantle in translating sine ulla requie as "destroyed my rest completely"; for the sense of the phrase, however, compare Ovid, Met., XV, 214 (semper requieque sine ulla), where the meaning is conveniently shown by the adjacent semper to be instead "unremittingly." On pages 83 and 186 the nose is Jerome's, not Onasus' (pace Schade); for its connection with subsanno cf. Jerome, In psalm. 2 (subsannatio... contracto naso exprimitur). Similarly on page 87 the knees are Malchus', not the abbot's (this time pace Schade, Fremantle, Bareille, Moricca, Mierow, Ewald, and Degórski); cf. Jerome, Epist., CVIII, 7,2. A few little tares of this kind do not however detract from a bumper crop. It is Germany's loss that the author should have abandoned his mother tongue in order to write this fine book in equally fine English.