Commonalities of Context
The similar contexts of Severus' and Jerome's lives, and to a lesser extent their reception of the same tradition about Priscillian, interpreted within the framework of a shared heresiological heritage, made their portraits of him profoundly compatible: parallel social and theological pressures nudged the two men toward similar adaptations of their cultural and textual resources. It remains now to examine the conflicts faced by Severus and Jerome as they each attempted to define and defend their authority as ascetics and scholars in the Christian community.
Sulpicius Severus
In 394 or 395, Sulpicius Severus withdrew from public life at the height of a successful rhetorical career.[88] Influenced by the ascetic zeal of Paulinus of Nola, Martin of Tours, and his own mother-in-law, Bassula,[89] Severus divested himself of most of his landed property[90] and determined to dedicate himself wholly to Christ. Within a few years, he had established an ascetic household on a country estate at Primuliacum in southern Aquitaine.[91] Severus may have been living there by the time of his publication of the Life of Martin in 396; it was certainly at Primuliacum that he wrote his account of Priscillian in the Chronicle , published between 403 and 406, as well as the contemporaneous Dialogues .[92]
The evidence for life at Primuliacum is meager, deriving primarily from Paulinus' letters to Severus and secondarily from the fictionalized depiction of Primuliacum in Severus' Dialogues . It is difficult to know to what extent the social organization of the community differed from that of a typical country estate—or, in other words, how far Primuliacum had moved along the path toward the more formalized social organization of "cenobitic monasticism." Primuliacum was, in ideal, a community composed entirely of Christian ascetics in which a new spirit of equality reigned. Severus gave up his legal ownership of the property and rejected the social privilege of a luxurious life;[93] Paulinus goes so far as to claim that Severus lived as a fellow slave to his slaves and as a slave to his poorer "brothers."[94] But Paulinus' description of Severus' servant Victor's attention to Paulinus' physical needs contradicts his own rhetoric.[95] In fact, Primuliacum appears to have retained much of the social structure of an aristocratic country estate, and Severus presided over the community with
the natural grace of assumed class superiority. His household consisted largely of slaves and other social inferiors, including young boys sent for an education in Christian discipline.[96] In addition, Primuliacum housed frequent visitors, notables of the local ascetic community and travellers from further afield;[97] several of these possessed some clerical rank, and one later source reports that Severus himself was an ordained presbyter.[98]
It is not known whether the community at Primuliacum included women. Neither Severus nor Paulinus explicitly mentions female residents, but if Severus' mother-in-law, Bassula, did not actually live at Primuliacum, she must have resided nearby, and other women may also have belonged to the community.[99] Bassula provided her son-in-law with stenographers,[100] and she was intensely interested in Severus' literary activity,[101] as well as in his building projects at Primuliacum.[102] Paulinus was ready to detect analogies between Severus' partnership with Bassula and his own relationship with his wife and "fellow servant" Therasia, who lived with Paulinus in the ascetic community founded by the couple at Nola.[103]
Even less is known of the daily routine at Primuliacum than of its social structure, but it is fairly certain that no formalized rule was employed. Severus constructed a new basilica and baptistry,[104] but the sources do not indicate whether daily offices were observed communally. If Severus followed Paulinus' recommendation, he and his fellow "monks" were tonsured, dressed in uniform simplicity, and lived on a diet of gruel and beans; however, Paulinus seems to have had reason to fear that this was not always the case.[105]
If the precise regime of Severus' asceticism is unclear, somewhat more is known about the response it elicited from contemporaries. Both Martin and Paulinus had provoked controversy by their zealous championing of asceticism,[106] and Severus likewise encountered serious opposition to his own choice to pursue an ascetic life. The Life of Martin was written in order to glorify and defend Martin and his disciples, including Paulinus and Severus himself. Severus had several audiences in mind: addressing the international ascetic community, he set out to prove that Gaul had produced monks as impressive as any in Egypt or the Orient; addressing the traditional Gallic aristocracy, he sought to demonstrate that Christianity could produce sophisticated literature in the tradition of the pagan classics; addressing a largely anti-ascetic Gallic clergy, he argued that it was the ascetic who was the true Christian and bishop. Not surprisingly, Severus' work seems to have intensified the controversy surrounding Martin, who died shortly after its publication. Severus found it necessary to defend the Life of Martin in his Letter to Eusebius and in the Dialogues , in
which he answers the criticism of skeptics who claim that his biography includes lies about Martin's miraculous powers.[107] Although its apologetic function is less obvious, Severus' Chronicle likewise defends Martin by placing him within the broad context of salvation history. Presenting the ascetic bishop as one of the apostolic and prophetic figures expected to appear—and to be rejected—at the end of time, Severus transforms the opposition to Martin into but another sign of the holy ascetic's power.[108]
Behind these literary defenses of Martin, we catch glimpses of the dispute, or series of disputes, that took place between Severus and the opponents of asceticism in southern Gaul. As early as 396, in concluding the Life of Martin , Severus remarks that many of those who criticize Martin, including some bishops, "are barking around me"; he protests that it is an honor to be slandered alongside Martin.[109] Similarly, some seven years later he closes his Chronicle with the observation that "the people of God and every excellent person are held up for abuse and laughter," clearly including both Martin and himself in the number of the virtuous persecuted.[110] These vague allusions give way in the Dialogues to more specific references to conflict with local bishops and clergy, on whom Severus' resentment now focuses; he complains that, of all the world, only the bishops and clergy of his own region have failed to recognize Martin's virtue and authority.[111]
In the opening passages of the first Dialogue , Severus asks the traveller Postumianus pointedly whether Christians in the east "are permitted to live even in the desert"; the clear implication is that local Christians do not enjoy the freedom to pursue their chosen way of life. Postumianus responds by asking whether the local bishops are still the same as they were before he left—i.e., actively opposed to asceticism. Not only are those bishops just as hostile as they were before, answers Severus, but one of his former friends has also grown cooler and less constant in his support.[112] Rumblings of a recent worsening of relations between Severus and local ecclesiastical authorities continue throughout the Dialogues . Severus Gallic companion refers to an associate of Severus whose anger has influenced a number of people to turn against Severus. In the same passage, Gallus makes mention of an "ungrateful" freedman who has deserted Severus, seemingly led astray by another (the angry associate?); Severus admits that it is only with great difficulty that he has restrained his own anger against the two.[113] In the third Dialogue , Postumianus mentions a notable figure in their neighborhood who, although often wise and judicious, is also quick to take offense and attack both clergy and laity—including, the context suggests, Severus' circle. Finally, the third Dialogue closes with an elaborate but enigmatic reference to a recently deceased Pomponius, who
appears to have defected from Severus' circle of supporters; he is perhaps to be identified with the freedman mentioned earlier. Severus notes that Pomponius should have listened to Severus or Postumianus and followed the example of Martin rather than "that one whom I do not wish to name"—perhaps the person who led the freedman astray. Some have blamed Severus for Pomponius' unfortunate death at sea, but they should instead examine their own role in the affair, suggests Severus.[114]
Although his references to opposition and dispute are frequent and unmistakable, Severus appears reluctant to discuss the details of the controversies in which he found himself involved. Fortunately, an external source, Jerome's polemical work Against Vigilantius , allows reconstruction of some of the issues at stake. The Vigilantius attacked in Jerome's work was a presbyter who carried a letter from Paulinus to Jerome in 395, subsequently returned to the west and accused Jerome of Origenism, and came to Jerome's attention again circa 404 by reason of his opposition to certain ascetic practices in southern Gaul.[115] Vigilantius also appears as the name of a member of Severus' community who carried letters between Severus and Paulinus in 396.[116] If the two Vigilantii are the same—which is quite possible, given the common link with Paulinus and the relative rareness of the name—then it would seem that around 403 a former member of Severus' community began to attack the way of life pursued at Primuliacum.[117] But even if the two Vigilantii are not the same, it is probable that the disputes we glimpse in Severus' Dialogues and Jerome's Against Vigilantius belong to the same context, since both reflect debates over asceticism taking place in the first few years of the fifth century in the Christian communities of southern Gaul.[118]
The practices opposed by Vigilantius, whom Jerome describes contemptuously as a humble innkeeper (caupo ),[119] can be matched on many points with those advocated and defended by the aristocratic Severus. Severus sought relics for his new basilica at Primuliacum.[120] Vigilantius attacked the veneration of relics and the associated practices of candlelighting and vigils, urging that the souls of martyrs are not dispersed in bits of bone or ash but gathered under the heavenly altar of God.[121] Severus had devoted much of his Life of Martin to the recording of the saint's miracles. Vigilantius questioned the function of miracles within the believing community.[122] Severus, like his friend Paulinus, emphasized the importance of ridding himself of his property in his conversion to the ascetic life.[123] Vigilantius criticized the irresponsible wasting of resources whose income could be managed to support the poor.[124] Severus withdrew to a country estate. Vigilantius called for faithful church attendance and active involvement in the urban communities.[125] In short, Vigilantius opposed the centrifugal dispersal of authority in the shrines of dead martyrs
and the persons of aristocrats and ascetics like Severus; in its place, he advocated centripetal focusing of authority, which might be represented by the cathedral, its public liturgy, and its official leaders. If Jerome is right in claiming that he had the support of more than one bishop, Vigilantius' campaign was not without success in southern Gaul.[126] The pro-ascetic presbyters Riparius and Desiderius—the latter perhaps the original recipient of Severus' Life of Martin[127] —seem to have felt sufficiently threatened to seek the support of Jerome in faraway Palestine.[128]
Competition between public and private understandings of community and authority is implicit in the attacks of Vigilantius and his anti-ascetic supporters; it is likewise implicit in Severus' defense. In that defense, Severus tacitly accepts the "public" terms of the debate. Invoking the rhetoric of public male and private female spheres, he uses gender to express symbolically the social legitimacy of his own privately centered life. This legitimating function of the gender hierarchy is evident above all in the Dialogues , where Severus delivers a set of surprising pronouncements on the necessity for a strict separation and subordination of women. Such a stance is hardly popular, he admits, and he warns his Gallic friend of the dangers of an open endorsement of Jerome's denunciation of intimacies between male and female ascetics.[129] Later, Severus recounts his own sobering experience:
I chastised a certain wandering and rather elegant widow who lived somewhat wantonly, and likewise a virgin who was clinging somewhat indecently to a certain young man who was dear to me—although I had indeed often heard her rebuking others who did such things. As a result, I aroused such great hatred from all women and the entirety of the monks that both bands undertook sworn wars against me.[130]
Severus declares that he had intended to remain silent from that point on, but his intention is blatantly contradicted by its recounting in a work intended for publication. He furthermore goes to considerable trouble to buttress his position on the separation of men and women with the authority of his hero Martin, framing the above account with three supporting Martinian anecdotes.
The first such anecdote occurs immediately preceding Severus' account of his criticism of the widow and virgin. Severus' friend Gallus relates how an empress, wife of the usurper Maximus, had lavished attention on Martin: following Gospel precedent, she had washed his feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair; like a servant, she had prepared and served him his meals. No woman had ever before touched Martin, claims Gallus, yet he praises the empress for her faith. Upon hearing this tale, Postumianus questions its dangerous implications: might it not seem
to legitimate free social intercourse between male ascetics and women? Gallus answers that the circumstances mitigate any suspicions of impropriety: first, Martin was quite old; second, the empress was not a "free widow" or "wanton virgin" but was "living under a husband" and acting under his instructions; third, the empress did not enter into a relationship of equals with Martin, but restricted herself to serving him; and fourth, the event was not repeated. Gallus emphasizes the second and third points with a concise statement of the hierarchy of the genders: "Let a married woman serve, not command you; serve, not recline with you." His presuppositions are clear: a "safe" woman is one who is subordinated to a man through marriage, obedience, and symbolic posture; her subordination implies chastity, whereas a claim to equality implies lack of chastity. Postumianus applauds Gallus' defense of Martin's behavior, but doubts whether he and the other ascetics of his region would ever be sufficiently free of suspicion to be able to observe such fine distinctions in their relations with women.[131] Severus' scripting of the dialogue between Gallus and Postumianus thus defends Martin and the possibility of pure interactions between ascetic men and virtuous women, while at the same time endorsing the general need for a strict separation and subordination of women even in ascetic life.
Severus' account of his own controversial criticism of ascetic women is followed by two paired, complementary tales, which underline the position supported by Severus and only seemingly compromised by the initial story of Martin and the empress. According to the first tale, a hermit and former soldier approached Martin with his desire to live together in spiritual marriage with his former wife, who was now also leading an ascetic life. Martin convinced the monk of the falseness of his desire, demanding to know whether he had ever seen a woman fighting alongside men in the line of battle. Although addressing an ascetic couple, Martin slipped from a military analogy into language appropriate to a traditionally defined marriage relationship:
Let a woman not enter the camp of men; let the battle line of soldiers remain separate; let the female, dwelling in her own tent, be far away. For it makes an army ridiculous, if a female crowd is mixed with the regiments of men. Let the soldier be in the battle line; let the soldier fight in the plain; let the woman keep herself within the protection of the walls. She also has her own glory, if she preserves her chastity when her husband is absent; this is her first virtue and perfect victory: not to be seen.[132]
Gallus pairs this intended demonstration of Martin's wisdom with the story of a virgin who, in effect, taught Martin the same lesson that he him-
self had taught the soldierly monk. As in the case of his interactions with the empress, Martin "set aside the rigor of his way of life" and sought to honor a famed virgin with a visit to her place of withdrawal. Maintaining a chaste privacy appropriate to her gender as well as her ascetic calling, the virgin refused to see him. Martin departed in joy, moved by the unusual example of a woman who sheltered herself even from his eyes. Many women would have thrown themselves at any monk or priest in their path, notes Gallus, taking the opportunity to chastise more gregarious virgins. And many monks or priests would have labeled the virgin a heretic in outrage at her seemingly insulting and insubordinate behavior, he adds still more darkly. But both Martin and the virgin, implies Gallus, correctly valued and interpreted female privacy as signifying, not disrespect and autonomy, but respect for the public social order in which women are separate from and subordinate to men.[133]
Severus' criticism of the wandering widow and virgin, joined with the framing Martinian anecdotes, does not merely represent an attack on less rigorous ascetics. I have suggested that it also constitutes a defense of Severus' own ascetic practice in the face of the opposition of men like Vigilantius and his episcopal supporters.[134] By advocating a strict separation and subordination of women, Severus struggles to distinguish himself from the "heretical" ascetics with whom his opponents might identify him. He combats the hostile public image of the ascetic community as anarchic, as symbolized by the disorderly relations of men and women, with the alternative image of the ascetic community as carefully ordered according to the classical model of the separation and subordination of the private female sphere to the public male sphere.[135] While implicitly acknowledging that some might falsely perceive an element of impropriety or disorder in Martin's own relations with women, Severus uses the example of his hero to endorse the subordination of women to their husbands in particular and to men in general. He casts himself in the role of one who chastises ascetic women for their disorderly publicity and mingling with men, and then he returns again to the example of Martin in order to emphasize the ideal of ascetic women's strict separation from men and their restriction to the private sphere. In this effort to defend his own ascetic ecclesiology, the classically educated Severus invokes the rhetoric of public male and private female spheres even in the face of apparent contradictions with his own social experience: his close relations with Bassula, Paulinus' and Therasia's spiritual partnership, and the acknowledged and approved visits of ascetic women to the holy Martin.[136]
Severus' use of gender relations to express and defend his understanding of Christian community and authority is not only operative in
his Dialogues but also surfaces as a minor theme in his account of the Priscillianist controversy in the final passages of the Chronicle . In the first book of the Chronicle , Severus has set up a conflict between the prophets and kings of Israel that prefigures the conflict in the second book between the prophetic figures of Hilary and Martin and the corrupt bishops of Severus' own time.[137] However, in his concluding account of the Priscillianist controversy, Severus contrasts the prophetic Martin, not only with the worldly bishops who oppose him, but also with "heretical" ascetics like Priscillian, with whom Martin is falsely identified. As we have seen, Severus' Priscillian violates the boundaries that separate and subordinate private to public, female to male, ascetic to bishop. He not only leads simple and ignorant Christians astray by means of his deceptive eloquence but also further disrupts the social order by "seducing" other men's wives and daughters and mingling promiscuously with strange women. He challenges bishops and then lays claim to a false episcopal authority of his own.
By shifting from a simple contrast between Martin and the worldly bishops to a more complex positioning of Martin between the "heretics," on the one hand, and the worldly bishops, on the other, Severus is able to suggest that Martin transcends but does not eradicate the distinction between public and private spheres and alienated and accommodating stances toward the world. Martin is unmarried but careful to observe the hierarchy of genders, wise in knowledge of the scriptures yet not puffed up by worldly education, neither subversive of the social order nor corrupted by power. Severus' hero, unlike Priscillian, succeeds in uniting the private authority of the ascetic holy person with the public authority of the episcopal office. And Severus attempts to defend his own role in the Christian community by denouncing and thereby separating himself from the "heretic" Priscillian and associating himself instead with Martin. The gnostic seducer serves effectively as a receptacle for the accusations from which Severus must distance himself, and at the same time provides a fitting counterpart to his attempt to create an acceptable social ideology for the ascetic community and for authority within that community.
Jerome
Jerome, like Sulpicius Severus, came from a relatively wealthy family and was trained in classical literature and rhetoric in preparation for a government career. He had not yet achieved any great worldly success when, circa 370, he turned aside to devote himself to an ascetic life. Ending a
temporary sojourn in Trier, Jerome returned to his native Stridon in the company of his friend Bonosus. In the nearby city of Aquileia,[138] Jerome and Bonosus encountered a growing and enthusiastic circle of Christian ascetics. They attached themselves to the ascetic household of the presbyter Chromatius, a household that included Chromatius' mother, sisters, and brother, the deacon Eusebius, as well as the archdeacon Jovinus and Jerome's friend Rufinus.[139] Jerome and Bonosus also formed ties with a broader network of ascetics in Aquileia and nearby towns,[140] and it was probably at Aquileia that Jerome met the wealthy Antiochene presbyter Evagrius.[141]
The restless Jerome did not remain long in Aquileia. By 374, after extensive travel in the east, he had reached Antioch, where he resided for a time in the household of Evagrius. Convinced at this point that anchoritic asceticism represented the holiest form of Christian life, Jerome soon packed up his library and took up residence among the monks of the Syrian desert. Involvement in the bitter theological controversies of the east drove Jerome back to the cities: first to Antioch, then to Constantinople, and finally, in 382, to Rome.[142] His three years in Rome were marked by close and productive relationships with patrons, above all the ascetic Bishop Damasus and the aristocratic widows Marcella and Paula. Although he had been ordained presbyter while in Antioch,[143] Jerome's position in Rome appears to have been based on his reputation as a scholar and his connection with powerful patrons rather than on any official standing as a member of the clergy.[144]
It was at Rome that Jerome must have first learned about Priscillian, who had recently submitted his unsuccessful petition to Damasus. Jerome's impressions of Priscillian at this point were probably mixed, perhaps reflecting Damasus' own ambivalent response; as we have seen, Jerome still hesitated to pass judgment on Priscillian when he wrote On Famous Men some ten years later. But it was also at Rome that Jerome became involved in controversies that crystallized the attitudes that ultimately shaped his much later and more vicious characterizations of Priscillian.[145] Although he had the support of the bishop, Jerome's incautious criticisms of the clergy and his uncompromising advocacy of the ascetic life provoked considerable opposition from within the Roman church.[146] In this context, Jerome defended himself from charges of social subversion in part by launching his own attack on undisciplined and promiscuous ascetics. The immediate success of this strategy was limited: after Damasus' death in late 384, Jerome was effectively run out of town, facing official charges of sexual immorality as well as rumors of sorcery and possibly Manichaeism.[147]
If Jerome did not succeed in preserving his informal position of authority in Rome, he nevertheless produced a provocative body of literature and a doctrinal platform for an ascetic elitism that proved extraordinarily influential. Jerome's famous Letter to Eustochium , written in Rome in 384, gives forceful expression to his opinions on asceticism and on the closely related issues of gender and authority in the Christian community.[148] As Jerome points out, the letter is not primarily a treatise in praise of female virginity, but rather a set of guidelines for the difficult task of preserving female virginity.[149] Again and again, Jerome exhorts the young virgin to guard her chastity by maintaining her privacy. Eustochium is to stay at home, foregoing even visits to the martyrs' tombs.[150] In her virginal sanctity, she should not be exposed to the profane gaze of the public eye. Taking her lesson from the Song of Songs , Eustochium should not seek Christ vainly in the streets but should await her "bridegroom" in the privacy of her bedroom. She should avoid the publicity even of a reputation for virtue, taking care that her ascetic accomplishments remain secret. She should refuse all social intercourse with worldly women, choosing her few female companions from among similarly sober-minded ascetics and shunning ostentatious monks, flattering clergy, and even overly gregarious virgins and widows. Proper subordination is a part of the restriction to the private sphere, and Jerome urges the young girl to obey her parents—and also, implicitly, her male mentor, Jerome.[151]
Jerome complements his positive exhortations to Eustochium with negative examples of the paths to be avoided. The letter begins with a caustic description of false or fallen virgins. Spiritual virginity may be lost even by a thought, Jerome warns; but many of the fallen are not only spiritual but literal prostitutes, using drugs to abort their pregnancies and thus maintain the lying semblance of virginity. These false virgins can be recognized by their self-indulgent lives, ostentatious public appearances, and irrepressible sociability. Among the worst offenders are the agapetae , women living in spiritual partnership with men who are bound to them by neither blood nor marriage.[152] The male counterparts of the false virgins are found among both ascetics and clergy. Men claiming to be monks drape themselves with chains and proudly exhibit their womanish uncut hair, bare feet, and rough clothing; but like the false teachers of 2 Tim. 3.6–7, they merely offer the appearance of virtue in order to make their way into homes and deceive noble women. Some clergy likewise use their ecclesiastical office to insinuate themselves into the homes—indeed the very bedrooms—of wealthy married women, Jerome warns. Effeminate in appearance and moral character, these men can be recognized by their fastidious dress, perfumed bodies, curled hair, jewelry, and affected gait.[153]
In this series of negative examples offered to the virgin Eustochium, Jerome condemns both men and women who violate the boundaries of public male and private female spheres in order to indulge their "feminine" sexuality. He suggests that sexuality is to be identified not only with female nature but also with heresy, insisting that there can be no true virgins among the heretics: "Virgins such as are said to be among the various heresies and among the followers of the vile Manichaeus must be considered not virgins but prostitutes."[154] This careful opposition of femininity, sexuality, and heresy, on the one hand, and masculinity, chastity, and orthodoxy, on the other, functions rhetorically to control Eustochium's behavior, while encouraging her to be constantly vigilant in protecting her vow. She is not to be accorded the freedom of those women who live without the restraint of either husband or ecclesiastical supervisor.[155]
It is apparent that Jerome's letter to Eustochium functions as a personal defense of his life in Rome as well as a means to advise and control a female ascetic. By his own account, Jerome was frequently surrounded by virgins with whom he enjoyed a relationship of familial intimacy.[156] "I often discussed the divine books with some of them, in so far as I was able. Reading gave rise to constant presence, constant presence created familiarity, and familiarity produced trust."[157] The appropriateness of such familylike relations between ascetic men and women was not universally acknowledged. In a letter in which he presents himself publicly as the aristocratic Eustochium's spiritual advisor, Jerome must, therefore, fend off suspicions of impropriety. He accomplishes this in part by his vehement denunciations of the monks and clergy who "seduce" the women of the Roman nobility. By implied contrast with these deceivers, Jerome suggests that he himself is modest and sober in demeanor, disciplined and austere in his manner of life, and above all respectful of the boundaries that separate male and female and public and private spheres.
Jerome appears curiously unable, however, to augment this negatively inferred self-portrait with an explicit, positive self-presentation. When he offers Eustochium his typology of monastic patterns, he finds no place for men who pursue asceticism in an informal and urban context.[158] Full of praise for both cenobitic and anchoritic lifestyles, he bitterly condemns the urban monks whom he calls "remnuoth": living together in twos or threes without any fixed rule, they are undisciplined, insubordinate, ostentatious, disrespectful of the clergy, and overly fond of socializing with virgins.[159] In this passage, Jerome appears to have accepted the application of the public-private distinction to the community of ascetic Christians, and he vigorously advocates the strict privatization of women in particular and of the ascetic community in general. However, within the terms of the
rhetoric of the separation of public and private spheres, his own role with respect to the ecclesiastical hierarchy and to his female associates in Rome is insupportable so long as he fails to clarify his relationship to the clergy and to separate himself from women.
In response to the pressures of public controversy and personal ambivalence, Jerome left Rome and returned to the east. Accompanied by Paula and her daughter Eustochium, he settled in the village of Bethlehem in 386. There he and his companions established two cenobitic communities, one for men, directed by Jerome, and one for women, directed first by Paula and then, after her death in 404, by Eustochium.[160] Jerome had finally found a resting place, and he remained at the Bethlehem monastery until his death in 420, over thirty years later. Although they were influenced by Pachomius' monastic rule, Jerome and Paula did not adhere to it rigidly, instead developing forms of monastic life suited to their circumstances and backgrounds. Paula, for example, seems to have divided her community into groups according to social class, thus echoing the hierarchical structure of the traditional aristocratic household.[161] Jerome himself neglected the Pachomian call to manual labor in favor of more scholarly pursuits. In many respects, he continued to lead the same life, pursuing his ascetic disciplines while remaining active as a scholar, teacher, and theological controversialist, intimately involved with the world around him. The structures of cenobitic monasticism provided a social space in which he could legitimately carry out such activities, relatively safe from charges of sexual immorality or social subversion, in spite of his continued close partnership with Paula and Eustochium and a lengthy conflict with the local bishop, John of Jerusalem.[162] While the separation of women from men within the monastic community must have reduced the scope of authority of such aristocratic patronesses as Paula and Eustochium, the separation of the monastic community from the urban episcopal community seems to have increased Jerome's autonomy. At one point, he and his ally Epiphanius went so far as to argue that a monastery lay outside the jurisdiction of its local bishop.[163]
Having embraced the rural cenobitic life in practice as well as in ideal, by 415 Jerome does not even mention the eccentric urban "remnuoth" in his letter to the aristocratic virgin Demetrias but discusses only the relative merits of the solitary and cenobitic lifestyles. He furthermore warns Demetrias against the dangers of the anchoritic life, which he now perceives to allow a scope of independence inappropriate for most men and for all women.[164] Once again invoking the authority of 2 Tim. 3.6–7,[165] the scriptural passage that also figures so largely in his portrait of Priscillian, Je-
rome instructs Demetrias to seek the security of communal life and to subordinate herself to the instruction of spiritual advisors.
It is therefore good to listen to your superiors, to obey those set over you, and, after the rules of the scriptures, to learn the way of life from others, and not to follow the worst teacher, namely, your own audacity. Concerning such women, the apostle says: "they are carried about with every wind of doctrine, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of truth."[166]
Jerome's has here reduced his original twofold typology of acceptable ascetic paths to one alternative. He suggests that the cenobitic life alone adequately preserves the social order through the separation and subordination of women to men and—in theory—of ascetics to bishops. In fact, the strict privatization of the ascetic community removed its leaders not only from direct competition with the urban bishops but also from their direct control, thus allowing for the construction of a separate and independent social hierarchy within the monastic community.
The relative stability of Jerome's life at Bethlehem did not preclude his nearly constant involvement in theological disputes, disputes that did not so much displace as continue the controversy over asceticism that had begun for Jerome at Rome. By 393, he found himself embroiled in a long-distance and much-publicized debate with the Italian Jovinian, centering around the question of the superiority of the ascetic over the married life. Once again escaping a controversy over asceticism with his reputation for orthodoxy just barely intact, Jerome continued in subsequent years to defend the notion of a lasting moral hierarchy over against the more egalitarian schemes that he perceived to be at the heart of the theologies of such opponents as the "Origenists" and, later, the followers of Pelagius. Rejecting both the preexistent souls and disembodied resurrection taught by Origen and the Pelagian doctrine of universal human perfectibility, Jerome persistently advocated a theological model that preserved greater continuity between the social distinctions encoded in the fleshly bodies of this life and the rewards to be enjoyed in the life to come.[167]
Throughout the Jovinianist, Origenist, and Pelagian debates, Jerome returned to the topics of gender and sexuality, using these marks of difference both rhetorically as signifiers of the limits of orthodoxy and heresy and theologically as enduring bodily indicators of the heavenly hierarchy. His evolving portrait of Priscillian—however tangential to Jerome's immediate theological concerns—is nevertheless exemplary in this respect. As noted above, Jerome's letter to the Spanish Theodora (c. 399) denounces
Priscillian as a heretic and womanizer in the tradition of Mark the gnostic. Invoking the example of the "little women" of 2 Tim. 3.6–7, Jerome warns the wealthy widow not to be seduced by Priscillian's treacherous followers, but rather to obey chaste and orthodox teachers like himself.[168] The rhetorical manipulation of gender and sexuality in this letter functions on several levels: to distance Jerome from the stereotype of the insubordinate and disorderly urban ascetic teacher; to enable Jerome to assert his hierarchical superiority over rivals among such teachers; and, finally, to persuade and control a woman whose patronage Jerome covets and whose authority of wealth and birth he seems both to admire and to resent. A similar desire to denounce potential rivals and exert control over a distant female correspondent may underlie Jerome's reference to Priscillian in his letter to the Gallic noblewoman Hedibia post 404.[169] The themes of the letter to Theodora are more explicitly echoed circa 410 in his Commentaries on Isaiah .[170]
If there are earlier hints that Jerome found Priscillian a peculiarly expressive figure, it was only in the final years of his life, during his conflict with Pelagius, that Jerome made central use of Priscillian in his polemical rhetoric. Probably inspired by Severus but also perhaps impelled by a desire to locate an easily demonized and safely dead western precursor for his new theological rival,[171] Jerome presents Priscillian as the heretical seducer par excellence in his letter to Ctesiphon of 415. Simon Magus, Nicolas, Marcion, Apelles, Montanus, Arius, Donatus—all are notorious for their dubious relations with women, and in this respect all are the forerunners of Priscillian. As the student of Agape and the teacher of "Galla," Priscillian is both seduced and seducer, an insidious magician who leads the women of the church astray, interspersing caresses with murmured phrases of Virgil, while putting on a false front of "perfection." Having painted this portrait of Priscillian, who had long since been executed by the emperor, Jerome hints darkly, "Now also the mystery of iniquity is at work. Both sexes trip each other up."[172] With these words, he points to Pelagius, who is the real target of his denunciation of Priscillian in this letter addressed to a Pelagian supporter.[173]
The portrait of Priscillian is directed not only at Pelagius and his male disciples but also, implicitly, at a powerful family of ascetic women with strong connections to Pelagius. Jerome shuns a direct attack on Demetrias, her mother, or grandmother, whose patronage he hopes to win for himself; he delicately avoids even mentioning Pelagius' name in this passage. Instead, Jerome is content to let the connections he has drawn between female nature, heresy, and sexual promiscuity stand as a gentle warning to those overly independent women, falsely convinced of their capacity
for perfection, who might presume to choose their own teachers, and perhaps—like Agape—even to teach themselves. Social intercourse with male teachers like Pelagius may leave women vulnerable to charges of physical unchastity as well as the spiritual faithlessness of heresy, he warns. Weak in mind and will, they risk seduction by false teachers. The solution, as Jerome makes explicitly clear in a letter addressed directly to Demetrias herself,[174] is to stay at home, both physically and intellectually, avoiding the company and influence of all strange men.