Monthly Archives: May 2010

Communion w/o Baptism Address at SCP Conference

The official announcement has come out so I’ll confirm it here…

My friends at the Society of Catholic Priests have asked if I would be willing to speak at the Second Annual Conference of the Society on addressing the whole Communion without Baptism debate from a catholic perspective. While I have written a bit on the subject at the Episcopal Cafe, I will go beyond what I wrote there and will fundamentally maintain that the grounds on which the debate is currently framed (inclusion vs. exclusion) represent a fundamental mischaracterization and misunderstanding of our sacramental imagination. As a result, when we even try to uphold a catholic position on these grounds, we’ve already started in the wrong place and conceded to a flawed description of the sacramental system.

More on this anon as it develops.

Needless to say, I’m humbled and honored by the request and am very much looking forward to going! I’d love to meet up with any of my readers who will be there, but I’ll warn you now that we may have a small window of opportunity; as the lovely M actually is a catholic priest she’ll be there for the whole conference meaning that I’ll be in charge of the catholic kiddies. Since I can’t leave them to fend for themselves too long, I’ll only be there for the day of my presentation. Again, more details as they become available…

A Table of Precedence for the 79 BCP (Updated)

Updated: I added some new categories to allow for local options and shifted the Saturday Office of the BVM below ferias of Easter.

The section on the Calendar at the beginning of the ’79 BCP does, I think, a good job of succinctly and simply explaining what could be a very complicated set of topics. It gives the right data for the sake of regular middle-of-the-road parishes and anyone lower. For those of us who go higher, there is freedom for more precision.

The key thing to remember when addressing it, though, is that it presents a didactic approach to the kalendar and not an analytic one. That is, it offers groups, numbered 1 through 5, that are clustered logically; while the categories roughly correspond with rank, they do not do so strictly—and this is a point that may cause confusion for the unwary.

In particular, there are two principal points where the categories do not correspond with rank. The first is the relation of Feasts of Our Lord with Sundays. You’ll note that Category 2 (Sundays) mentions a few Feasts of Our Lord that supersede Sundays; others don’t. There are logical rules in play here—namely that Feasts of Our Lord take precedence over Sundays in Christmas and Ordinary Time—but they’re not stated explicitly.

The second is Category 4 (Days of Special Devotion). At first glance, this category looks much like what an earlier book would refer to as privileged and non-privileged Greater Feria—but it’s not. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday have already been discussed in Category 3, and the ferias of Advent are nowhere to be found. In fact, upon reflection, you’ll realize that this category has nothing to do with precedence at all, but is, rather, a set of ascetical regulations rather than liturgical ones.

Thus, for the sake of greater precision, the Calendar portion needs to be updated with an analytic section that clarifies the rules underlying this didactic presentation. To meet that need, I offer a trial chart for discussion. In the main, my chart follows what I understand to be the logical root of the BCP’s Calendar, the Roman General Notes on the Liturgical Year, with adaptations based on difference between the two systems. Furthermore, there is a practical end to this chart, in that it provides me with an analytic system that allows machine ranking of liturgical occasions; this requires one minor deviation from custom which I’ll describe below:

I.

1. Easter Triduum [Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday]
2. Christmas, Ascension, Holy Trinity, All Saints’ Day, Epiphany and Pentecost
3. Sundays of Advent, Lent, and Easter
4. Ash Wednesday
5. Weekdays of Holy Week from Monday from Thursday inclusive
6. Days within the Octave of Easter
7. Local Feast of Dedication of a church, Local Feast of Title, Local Feast of Patron
8. Special Feasts, locally having a first class rank*
9. Proper Feasts, locally having a first class rank*

II.

10. Holy Days: Feasts of Our Lord
11. Sundays of the Christmas Season and Ordinary Time
12. Holy Days: Major Feasts
13. Special Feasts, locally having a second class rank*
14. Days of Optional Observance, locally having a second class rank*

III.

15. Special Feasts, locally having a third class rank*
16. Days of Optional Observance, locally having a third class rank*
17. Weekdays of Lent
18. Weekdays of Advent from December 16th through December 24th inclusive
19. Days of Optional Observance
20. Weekdays of Advent up to December 15th inclusive
21. Weekdays of the Easter season
22. [Saturday Office of the BVM]†
23. Weekdays of the Christmas season
24. Weekdays of Ordinary Time

* The starred categories reflect the freedoms given in the Days of Optional Observance section. Practically speaking, the Prayer Book allows the appointment of propers to any day that does not contravene the pre-existing rules. This allows feasts already in the Calendar to receive additional celebration or the addition of other feasts so long as the other rules are obeyed.

† There is no official liturgy for the Saturday Office of the BVM in the BCP. This rank may be dropped if not utilized. Furthermore, I’m personally unclear on how it ranks seasonally; My understanding is that the office is not used in Advent or Lent but that it is the rest of the year–specifically is it used in Easter or no?

Pointing the English Epistle

Thanks to the generosity of Father and the congregation, I’ve been honored to serve as sub-deacon at the Church of the Advent; last Sunday was my subdiaconal debut which went rather well. We use an adapted form of Fortescue’s ceremonial for those interested; I may put up my own notes on our practice if there’s interest.

One of the major tasks of the sub-deacon is the proclamation of the Epistle. Following the best historical practice, it is sung recto tono or just simply read on most days. There is, however, an Epistle tone which is used on the highest feast days. The Epistle tone uses intonations for the metrum (pausing point), full stop, and questions as well as a unique concluding tone. As a result, I’ve been working on pointing the Epistles; last week it was the Pentecost reading, this week the Holy Trinity. It’s not a completely straight-forward process so I thought I’d share some of what I’m learning.

1. The presence of the metrum requires interpretive choices. That is, it marks a pause in the main thought of the sentence from which you continue to the end. Now I’ve noticed that readers in many churches have trouble proclaiming Paul well—and that’s entirely understandable. Even in translation, Paul’s writing style is unfamiliar to modern Americans. He uses long sentences with quite a number of clauses. And not all of these clauses are created equal, either. Some are parenthetical; some are additional; some are central.The trick is to proclaim them in such a way that the differences can be discerned by those listening.

When chanting the reading, my base rule is that the metrum doesn’t just go on any ol’ comma or semi-colon that presents itself; rather, a metrum only belongs at the conclusion of a central or substantive clause. For parenthetical or additional clauses, I just put a holding punctus on the reciting tone at the conclusion.

2. My first port of call was the very helpful Sung Reading Tutorial and the accompanying audio files from the good folks at CMAA posted at MusicaSacra. Unfortunately, at the present time the link to the printed tutorial is broken. The audio, however, contains almost word-for-word what is in the tutorial.

The one problem that I encountered in working fro this pattern is that, while the example is with an English text, the directions still have Latin in mind. This comes to a head in describing the metrum—all of the examples in the document have the accent on the penultimate syllable rather than the ultimate (er, second to last rather than last). So, I went looking for some assistance…

3. …And found it in on the website of the (Roman) International Commission on English in the Liturgy. They have a document called “Music for the English Language Roman Missal” which gave some very helpful examples.

Early Medieval Homiletics Reading List

Brandon was wondering…a bit ago now…about some guidance on reading for medieval homiletics.

Here are some of my thoughts on the matter. Now—I do come at this from an unusual direction. That is, a lot of the medievalists out there can be lumped into one of four camps: the English/Language-types, the History-types, the Art-types, or the Religion-types. Most of the recent work on Old English homiletics has come from the English-types. Thus, they come with a certain perspective with a certain knowledge base and certain expectations.

I don’t come from there.

As a Religion-type I approach the field and the subject matter from a rather different set of presuppositions and perspectives. No doubt, that will flavor my list both in terms of what I include and what I don’t.

The other thing I want to add is a note on the early medieval period itself. When viewed from the History-Of-Ideas perspective, the early medieval period looks rather bare and most surveys tend to skip from the patristics to the scholastics with nary a hitch. Needless to say this annoys me… If this is the case generally, it seems especially to be the case in terms of homiletics as you will find many references to that fact that no original thought was going on and that everyone was just copying the Fathers. It’s not that simple. The Early Medieval period is best understood as a period of synthesis and consolidation where thinkers individually and the Church corporately was sifting through the remains of both the Classical and Late Antique world in an attempt to salvage what they could and to systematize this host of fragments into meaningful and useful systems of thought. Ignoring this aspect of the period is analogous to dismissing mosaics as not being proper glasswork because it’s just a bunch of broken bits pushed together—and not even in the original order!

Enough ranting—here are my thoughts by category…

Overviews of the History of Preaching

Yngve Brilioth, A Brief History of Preaching, translated by Karl E. Mattson, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1965). An old mainstay of the history of homiletics

Paul S. Wilson, A Concise History of Preaching, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1992). A more recent voice concerning homiletical history

Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). The new standard in terms of breadth, a work stamped with an idiosyncratic approach shaped by Reformed ideals.

These three are all histories of preaching written from the perspective of 20th century homiletics. There’s no point in reading these through—just find them in the library and spend some time skimming their medieval sections and jotting down some notes. Here you’ll see what modern homileticians think of the medieval tradition (when they think of it at all…). Notably, all of these are Protestant, the last especially so.

One which I haven’t seem but which seems to be the broadly liberal protestant answer to Old’s conservative protestant is O.C. Edwards, A History of Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 2004).

The only recent item I’ve seen out of Roman Catholic circles is a book which I think bears a very misleading title: C. Colt Anderson, Christian Eloquence: Contemporary Doctrinal Preaching (Mundelein, Ill.: Hillenbrand, 2005). This is written as a textbook for preaching classes and is a “Reform of the Reform” attempt to teach modern preachers how to preach in a medieval style. I’ve been contemplating writing a review of it for publication but haven’t found the right time or venue. In short, I think it sets forth a fascinating project and even a decent structure in the opening few chapters but fails to deliver. It doesn’t adequately carry through its own project, and it doesn’t address what I regard as the fundamental question in adapting medieval homiletical theory for the modern pulpit which is the connection between tradition, revelation, authenticity, and the ethics of using some else’s material.  In short, it could have been awesome…

Patristics

Secondary Sources

Johannes Quasten, Patrology, 4 vols. (Notre Dame: Christian Classics, reprint n.d.) This is the massive overview to patristic thought which should be your starting place for any question, issue, or query concerning the Church Fathers. Read it through once, then refer to it as needed. The bibliographic data is becoming dated but will reliably point you to the stand-by studies and critical editions.

Its single greatest failing for our purposes is that it ends with Leo the Great; no Gregory, no Bede.

Primary Sources

Augustine ET: Tractates on John, NPNF1.7; Sermon of the Mount, Selected Homilies on the Gospels, NPNF1.6. As far as sermons go, Augustine’s Tractates provided the major word on the Gospel of John. The work on the Sermon on the Mount was also influential. As for others, many of the Augustinian sermons floating around the early medieval world were not really by him (Caesarius of Arles’s work frequently traveled under Augustine’s name.

Maximus of Turin [Sermons, edited by Almut Mutzenbecher, CCSL 23 (Turhout: Brepols, 1999); ET: Sermons of St. Maximus of Turin, translated by Boniface Ramsey, Ancient Christian Writers 50 (Newman, 1989)

Leo the Great [Sermons, 4 vols. edited by René Dolle, Sources chrétiennes 22, 49, 74, 200, (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1949-1973); ET: Sermons, translated by Jane Freeland and Agnes Conway, Fathers of the Church 93 (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1995)] Selected sermons of Leo can also be found in the NPNF2.12. One of the greatest popes & preachers, Leo stands as a representative of the finest traditions of Late Antiquity.

Gregory the Great [Homiliae in evangelia, edited by Raymon Etiax, CCSL 141, (Turhout: Brepols, 1999); ET: Forty Gospel Homilies, translated by David Hurst, CS 123, (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990)] Reformer and visionary, Gregory stands on the cusp between Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval as an influential liminal figure. Be warned, the English translation’s numbering of the homilies is idiosyncratic and should be cross-checked with the CCSL edition.

The Venerable Bede [Bede Venerabilis opera. Pars III: Opera homilectica; Pars IV: Opera rhythmica, edited by David Hurst and J. Fraipont, CCSL 122, (Turhout: Brepolis, 1955); ET: Homilies on the Gospels, 2 vols., translated by Lawrence T. Martin and David Hurst, CS 110-111, (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1989-1990)] The star of Northumbrian biblical scholarship, Bede represents the finest work of a scholar in dialogue with both Latin orthodoxy and the opening German mission fields.

This stuff here is the heartland of the early medieval homiliary traditions.

Early Homiletics

Augustine, On Christian Doctrine. Translated by D.W. Robertson, Jr. The Library of Liberal Arts. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1958. This is a classic—no doubt about it. But Augustine’s impact on early homiletical theory is entirely incomplete without also reading:

Augustine, On the Catechizing of the Uninstructed, NPNF1.3. This is where Martin of Braga, Pirmin, and Aelfric all get their fundamental template for missionary preaching. It deserves much more attention than it gets.

Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, NPNF2.12. Not explicitly a preaching manual, but Gregory does talk quite a bit about preaching and about shaping the preaching to the audience.

Miller, Prosser, Benson, Readings in Medieval Rhetoric, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973) This is a great collection of primary sources and summaries of primary sources. It includes the complete text of Bede’s De Schematibus et Tropis in English along with a number of other helpful texts.

There were no more preaching manuals until the rise of the scholastics. Alan of Lille comes next in sequence but it’s crucially important to notice the gap.

Why were there no preaching manuals between the patristic to the scholastic period? It’s not just because people were copying… Rather, it was because the medievals were still in touch enough with classical rhetoric to understand that preaching/rhetoric was composed of three things: talent, training, and imitation. And that last is key. If you want to know the great preaching manuals of the early medieval world, you must go back to the sermons of Gregory and Augustine and study their method. Then look at the sermons of Bede, Aelfric, and Haymo to see how they deploy this method. It’s in the comparison between these sets of authors that you’ll truly understand how early medieval homiletics was shaped.

Liturgy

Perhaps the single greatest difference between my approach and that of most of the English-types is that I understand the sermon to be a discursive element within the liturgy. Preaching in the early medieval period cannot be separated from the liturgy. Even if there is nothing ostensibly liturgical about it, the liturgy still remains the primary frame of reference.

I’ll not deluge you here, but recommend only three works: one an ancient commentary, one a modern, and one an invaluable reference. Start with:

John Harper, The Forms and Orders of the Western Liturgy From the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991). This provides the essential overview. Once you’ve got these pieces in place, you’re ready to tackle:

Isidore of Seville, De Ecclesiasticis Officiis, translated by Thomas Knoebel, Ancient Christian Writers (Newman Press, 2008). After this have on hand for reference:

Cyrille Vogel, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, translated by William Storey and Niels Rasmussen (Portland: Pastoral Press, 1986)

The Homiliary Tradition

Dust off your French.

H. Barré, Les homéliares carolingiens de l’école d’Auxerre, Studi e Testi 225 (Rome: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana 1962)

Reginald Grégoire, Homéliaires liturgiques médiévaux: analyse des manuscrits, (Bibl degli studi medievali 12; Spoleto, 1980) This one is crucial for understanding the contents of the great homiliaries and how they relate to one another (or don’t). If you want to know what was in the homiliaries, this is the place to go.

Anglo-Saxon Homiletics

Mary Clayton, “Homiliaries and Preaching in Anglo-Saxon England,” Peritia 4 (1985), 207-42. This has got to be your starting point. It’s the best overview I know and most of the later articles are working along lines Clayton lays down here.

Cyril Smetana, “Ælfric and the Early Medieval Homiliary,” Traditio 15 (1959), 163-204. and also…

Cyril Smetana, “Paul the Deacon’s Patristic Anthology” in The Old English Homily & its Backgrounds, Ed. Paul E. Szarmach and Bernard F. Huppé.  (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1978), 75-97. Without a doubt, Smetana is your go-to guy for Paul the Deacon.

Joyce Hill, “Ælfric and Smaragdus,” Anglo-Saxon England 21 (1992), 203-237. I won’t list all of Joyce Hill’s items here because there are some I don’t have to hand. Read whatever you can from her!

Milton McC. Gatch, Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977. Mac is an Episcopal priest and fundamentally gets the connection between preaching and liturgy—the only recent author I know of to do so.

I’ll admit to not having read Aaron’s latest volume (The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation, ed. Aaron J. Kleist (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007)) so hopefully some material in there will prove me wrong.

So—these are the directions that I would point you in, Brandon (and others). There’s clearly a lot here. The best plan, as always, is to spend the most time mastering the primary sources; secondary opinions can be added in later. Fr. Adam and others, please feel free to fill in and around what I haven’t said here!

A Blessed Feast of St Bede To All!

Yesterday’s First Vespers started the Feast of St Bede, patron of the breviary and my very favorite Anglo-Saxon monastic saint.

And my apologies to those who celebrated the First Vespers of St Bede at the breviary yesterday; duties at home kept me from checking the page until late last night when I discovered to my chagrin that I neglected to add the Proper readings to the Year 2 lectionary… Then this morning I discovered that the contemplative shellfish had returned; the hymn mentions the soul of the monastic saint resting in the “clam of quiet love”. Richard had mentioned this and I’d fixed it before but apparently I hadn’t changed it in the master—as has now been done…

In any case, a blessed feast to all!

Canadian Liturgical News and Downloads

The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada has released its liturgical documents as free PDF downloads. Here’s the official announcement on the move which contains links to the Book of Alternative Services among other items. Even though this is titled “Alternative”, keep in mind that the Canadian Church follows English precedent; there is an official Canadian Book of Common Prayer released in 1962 which I understand to be a light revision of the English 1662 BCP. The BAS (from 1985) is the normative use and is quite similar to the American ’79 BCP. For whatever it’s worth, the Canadian BCP is not available at the above link but may be found online at the site of the Prayer Book Society of Canada.

One difference that I see as I scan the BAS’s section on the Daily Office is a didactic introduction before the liturgies themselves that give some information about the history and theology of the liturgy. This seems like a Good Thing (as long as it’s accurate and well done as these appear to be).

However, the news item includes this news as well:

Now General Synod is embarking on another period of liturgical revision. At the national meeting of General Synod this June, members will consider new principles for liturgical revision. They will also consider a motion asking the Faith, Worship, and Ministry (FWM) Committee to start work on the next generation of liturgical texts.

Dr. Scully notes that if General Synod gives the go-ahead, this next stage of liturgical revision will likely involve online conversation. The last FWM committee wanted to ensure that the web could be used to engage people from across the country in a participatory process. “Trial use and evaluation for new liturgies could be very lively and web-based,” said Dr. Scully.

So, the Canadians are taking the plunge towards a new official book. It’ll definitely be worth following online and through our correspondents on the ground as these matters develop as they will no doubt have an impact on future directions in American liturgical revision as well.

I, for one, will be interested to see if the Canadians will be moving towards or away from the directions that seem to be taking in the Enriching Our Worship materials…

h/t to Fr. Cody Unterseher at PrayTell

On Timing

Whoever decided that Kalamazoo should intersect with the Feast of the Ascension was in grievous error…

I owe y’all comments, posts which are in the works, and emails. None of these will be forthcoming, I’m afraid, until after the feast. Except to you, Brandon; the paper should be coming in the next few hours.

Monastic Theologies of the Trinity

I’m feverishly working away in my spare hours on a presentation for Ka’zoo. I’ll regrettably not be able to attend, but a comrade has graciously agreed to read the piece in my place. I’m writing on Ælfric’s supplemental homily XIa which I argue is a composition designed to summarize the core of the Christian message by explicating the Trinity using a life of Christ constructed through the liturgical year. Ælfric doesn’t go speculative (much), but rather chooses to go liturgical. It’s quite an interesting text and I’ve used it when I’ve taught both preaching and the Church Year.

It’s in light of this context that I was greatly amused to read the following from Br. Stephen:

And, if you were checking in today for religious insight, here’s an explanation of the Trinity given to me on last night’s walk at recreation, which perfectly encapsulates the healthy disinterest that monks generally have in systematic theology:

You have an old man with a beard, a young man with a beard, a dove, and a triangle that connects them. The Athanasian Creed explains the diagram. Go beyond that and you’ll probably get yourself into trouble.

He therefore that will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity.

Revisiting Jerome

Who are the great Doctors of the Church in the West?

Conventionally, there are four: Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, and Jerome. Boniface VIII declared them such in 1298 and was establishing by statement what had been implicit in Western practice for centuries.

Why Jerome?

It’s a simple question with an obvious answer which, I believe, is not necessarily the best answer. The simple answer is that Jerome was the translator and editor of the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Scriptures that has served as the basis for Western practice down to the Enlightenment and beyond. Indeed, one of the greatest ruptures of the Reformation was a move away from the Vulgate and back to the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible. Related to Jerome’s work on the Vulgate is his profusion of biblical commentaries and other resources, particularly his work on places names and his (often fanciful) etymologies of Hebrew names.

The knee-jerk answer, then, is that Jerome’s place is due to his biblical work. And there is a great truth to this answer—but it is incomplete.

A more complete yet disconnected answer is provided by the editor to Jerome’s work in the NPNF:

St Jerome’s importance lies in the facts: (1) That he was the author of the Vulgate Translation of the Bible into Latin, (2) That he bore the chief part in introducing the ascetic life into Western Europe, (3) That his writings more than those of any other Fathers bring before us the general as well as the ecclesiastical life of his time. (NPNF 2.6.ix)

The more I read early Western monastic sources, the more clearly I see point 2 and its wider influence. Furthermore, I think we err if we see his biblical and his monastic work as separate and not intimately related.

For one thing, a great portion of Jerome’s biblical commentaries are properly translations rather than “original” works (recognizing that the term “original” makes little sense and holds little value in the patristic/medieval world). Origen looms large throughout Jerome’s corpus.  The Origien connection in particular reminds me of points made by Jean Leclercq to which De Lubac assents:

Medieval monastic culture is based on the Latin Bible. But the Bible cannot be separated from those who commented it—that is to say, the Fathers. Often called simply the expositores, even in their writings which are not commentaries they did little else but explain Holy Scripture. Moreover, monasticism is inclined toward patristics for a very special reason: its basic text and its origins. One one hand, the Rule of St Benedict itself is, in fact, a patristic document; it assumes, it evokes an entire ancient spiritual milieu. On the other, St Benedict prescribes the reading in the Divine Office of the expositiones written by those he calls the Fathers; in his last chapter, he again urges the monks to read the Fathers. The word occurs four times in this chapter and designates more especially the Fathers of monasticism. The latter are Easterners, and this fact results in something new: Benedictine monasticism is attracted, not only to patristic sources in general, but Eastern ones in particular. (Leclercq, Love of Learning and Desire for God, 89)

If we read the introductions to the different volumes of the critical edition of the Latin Origen, we note that almost all the manuscripts are of monastic origin and that most date from the ninth and the twelfth centuries. Other indications point to the conclusion that in every period or place where there was a monastic renewal, there was a revival of Origen. It is true of the Carolingian reform; it is even more definite, or in any case more readily apparent, in the monastic revival of the twelfth century. (Leclercq, Love of Learning and Desire for God, 94)

To separate the Scripture from the commentaries from the ascetical writings is a fool’s errand and the academic balkanization of the study of religion that perpetuates it in this era obscures from the eyes of the Church important pieces which must be seen in relation.

All of Jerome’s writing is ascetical even if not all of it is explicitly so.

Speaking of the strictly and explicitly ascetical, though, there are two genres in particular where Jerome’s ascetical doctrines are most clearly laid out—the lives and the letters.

Jerome wrote three documents that fall under the category of lives: the Life of Paul the Hermit, the Life of Hilarion, and the Life of Malchus, the Captive Monk. As I’ve alluded in an earlier post, the third is more properly thought of as the first monastic novella. There is no doubt in my mind that it is a fictional vehicle for communicating Jerome’s theology of the ascetical life which is focused primarily (and perhaps overly) on the centrality of chastity. The second, the Life of St Hilarion, is a life in the conventional sense, written concerning an historical figure who lived in Palestine and Cyprus. The first is a toss-up as to the balance between empirical history, theological reification, and fiction. As the introduction to the Life of Hilarion makes quite clear, questions as tho the historicity of Paul the Hermit are not simply modern:

And so we in taking up the work begun by [Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis] do [St Hilarion] service rather than wrong: we despise the abuse of some who as they once disparaged my hero Paulus, will now perhaps disparage Hilarion; the former they censured for his solitary life; they may find fault with the latter for his intercourse with the world; the one was always out of sight, therefore they think he had no existence; the other was seen by many, therefore he is deemed of no account. It is just what their ancestors the Pharisees did of old! They were not pleased with John fasting in the desert, nor with our Lord and Saviour in the busy throng, eating and drinking. But I will put my hand to the work on which I have resolved, and go on my way closing my ears to the barking of Scylla’s hounds. (Life of Hilarion, 1; NPNF 2.6.303)

What Jerome did do—and quite cleverly—was to piggy-back on the most successful work of its kind, Athanasius’s Life of Antony. With his Life of Antony, Athanasius single-handedly created the genre of the ascetic biography and introduced the monastic way of life to the Christian world. Jerome’s one-time bishop Evagrius of Antioch (not the other Evagrius) translated Athanasius’s work into Latin and Jerome “linked” to it with a vengeance; the Life of Paul the Hermit isn’t properly a life at all, but after an introduction to Paul details a meeting between Paul and Antony. Likewise, Hilarion also meets with Antony who praises the Palestinian monk. Due to these links, Jerome’s lives are almost invariably found in western manuscripts that contain Athanasius’s Life of Anthony, then Jerome’s other three—the first two as further records of Antony, the third trailing along to round out Jerome’s set.

As far as the letters go, Jerome wrote many letters of advice to correspondents across the Mediterranean, often giving direction on living the ascetic life or raising children to be ascetics. (Yes, Jerome is the ultimate source of the comment from Benedict XVI a year or so ago when he said something to the effect that marriage is a wonderful institution because it creates people who can be celibates… [“I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins.” (Letter 22.10; NPNF 2.6.30)])

Several letters are justly famed as being central ascetical documents, especially Letters 22, 52, 107, and 130. That having been said, cherry-picking is the least pleasurable way to encounter Jerome; his letters deserve to be read through. In doing so you’ll be introduced to a man with few illusions as he looks at others, and receive confirmation that an acid and sarcastic tongue is no bar to becoming a great saint! (Come to think of it, given Luther, perhaps that’s a prerequisite for being a major biblical translator…)

Jerome deserves to be revisited and read more widely especially given his place in the ascetic life of the West. Jerome is a primary conduit for the ideals of the monastic life moving from East to West. In his transmission of Origen and Origenian spirituality, in his evocative construction of the monastic life in his Lives, and in the practical and theoretical directions found in his letters, he is truly one of the founding fathers of the ascetic life in the West and justly earns the designation Doctor of the Church.