Jerome and Western monasticism: asceticism, evergetism, and orthodoxy in the Late 4th-century Hispania

Abstract

Jerome had very little Hispanic epistolary correspondence. Nonetheless, the information contained in his few surviving letters gives us an idea of the essential nature of the first Hispanic monasticism that related to aristocratic asceticism in a family milieu. Among other things, it was the economic basis for the foundation of monasteries throughout the Holy Land under the direct patronage of Jerome of Stridon. Lucinus and his wife Theodora were wealthy Baetican landowners who became active euergetes for the Christian cause and embraced an ascetic life under Jerome’s influence. Lucinus sent conspicuous amounts of money to Jerome. He also sent a garment he had worn as a symbol of his conversion to monasticism, a decision Jerome endorsed and blessed when he replied by sending silicon garments for him and his wife, Theodora. Abigaus was a blind man who also converted to asceticism under the epistolary influence of Jerome. He appears to have been related to a proto-monastic community to which Lucinus and Theodora may have belonged. This is an exciting aspect that allows us to fully comprehend the beginnings of coenobitism in the western reaches of the Roman Empire. The portrait of a late 4th-century orthodox asceticism painted by Jerome’s letters will be analyzed and compared with the information gleaned from the contemporary archaeological remains in Hispania impregnated by Priscillianism and other heterodox movements against which Jerome railed through epistolography from his base in the Holy Land.