Commentary on Galatians

Introduction

3 INTRODUCTION 1. Jerome’s Life and Works1 The Early Years Jerome was born around 347 into an affluent Christian household in Stridon, a small and virtually unknown town on the border between the Roman provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia.2 When he was around the age of twelve, his land-owning father Eusebius sent him to Rome to receive an aristocratic secondary education in Latin grammar, literature, and rhetoric. As Jerome would boast later in life, he studied under Aelius Donatus, the most famous Latin grammarian in the fourth century AD and the author of commentaries on Virgil and Terence as well as a grammar textbook that became a staple in the medieval and Renaissance classroom.3 Jerome went on to receive specialized 1. The standard English-language biography of Jerome is J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome : His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London: Harper & Row, 1975), but see also the excellent abbreviated biography in S. Rebenich, Jerome (London: Routledge , 2002), 3–59. In German, Rebenich’s Hieronymus und sein Kreis: Prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1992) and Alfons Fürst’s Hieronymus: Askese und Wissenschaft in der Spätantike (Freiburg: Herder , 2003) are indispensable treatments. The older biographies by Georg Grützmacher (Hieronymus: Eine biographische Studie zur alten Kirchengeschichte, 3 vols. [Berlin: Dieterich, 1901–8]) and Ferdinand Cavallera (Saint Jérôme: Sa vie et son oeuvre, 2 vols. [Paris: E. Champion, 1922]) have been superseded by the abovementioned studies. Finally, I should call attention to the recently published collection of essays in Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings and Legacy, ed. A. Cain and J. Lössl (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2009). 2. There has been much debate about Stridon’s precise location. See, e.g., M. Niedermann, “Le lieu de naissance de saint Jérôme,” in idem, Recueil Max Niedermann (Neuchâtel: Secrétariat de l’Université, 1954), 248–51; I. Fodor, “Le lieu d’origine de S. Jérôme: reconsidération d’une vieille controverse,” RHE 81 (1986): 498–500. 3. For an overview of Donatus’s later influence, see P. F. Grendler, School- 4 INTRODUCTION training in Rome in rhetorical theory and declamation, which was supposed to prepare him for a lucrative career in law or government. The young student had much more on his mind than just academics. He started to become serious about his childhood faith. At some point he was baptized and would spend Sundays visiting martyrs’ tombs in the Roman catacombs with friends. Yet for all his deepening religiosity, the small-town boy in him evidently had trouble resisting the allures of big-city life. Cryptic allusions in his later writings suggest that during these years he lost his virginity.4 This certainly would help to explain why Jerome , as an adult monk, idealized virginity and displayed such contempt for human sexuality. In the middle or late 360s Jerome completed his studies and moved to the Gallic city of Trier. At that time Trier was a key administrative center and the residence of the emperor Valentinian , and thus it was an obvious stopping-point for an ambitious young careerist looking for employment opportunities in the imperial bureaucracy.5 The few years Jerome spent there are, regrettably , his “lost years.” One of the very few concrete personal events that we can assign to this period is a profound conversion experience and consequent decision to become a monk. Some deeply religious Christians of that age made their dramatic renunciation of the world immediately after baptism. It took Jerome almost a decade to come to the edge of that precipitous cliff. Had the lure of a promising secular career, and perhaps also the hope for marrying and raising a family, kept his monastic impulse in check until then? We will never know. What we can know is that Jerome’s break with his former life—once he made it—was decisive. After leaving Trier, Jerome headed for the northeastern Italian city of Aquileia, a stronghold for Christian asceticism in the ing in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 162– 202. Jerome was quite proud of having studied under Donatus, and on more than one occasion (see, e.g., Comm. Eccl. 1.9) he referred to Donatus affectionately as “my teacher” (praeceptor meus). 4. Kelly, Jerome, 20–21. 5. J. Steinhausen, “Hieronymus und Laktanz in Trier,” TZ 20 (1951): 126–54. INTRODUCTION 5 late fourth century.6 Here he joined...