Jerome's Epistula Prima
How Can We Read it?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12797/CC.25.2022.25.06Keywords:
Jerome, Epistula prima, epistolary form, fictional letter, artistic expression, asceticism, Christian epistolographyAbstract
Jerome wrote Epistula prima probably during the decade of 366–376. Little is known about this stage in his life, but it was apparently then that as a young man he became interested in asceticism and at the end of this period of time finally decided to become a monk. However, the ascetic ideas are not the main theme of Ep. 1. The letter tells the story of a falsely accused woman who was subjected to torture and survived seven strokes of the executioner’s sword. The way in which Jerome interprets and presents these events reflects his spiritual profile and aesthetic preferences. The text can be interpreted both as a letter (a ‘real’ or a ‘fictional’ one) with an embedded narrative and as a non-epistolary work with a dedicatory preface. This affects the way in which the reader responds to the introduction (where Jerome’s anxiety concerning the imperfection of his style is expressed) as well as his or her right to assess the subsequent narrative. None of these approaches eliminates the duality in the text’s structure. Therefore, it should be interpreted on the two following levels: as an epistolary speculum animi, which shows Jerome in the situation of undertaking the task of writing the narrative, and as another, literary speculum, which reflects the author’s soul by means of artistic expression.
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