A Militant Bride: Gender-Loaded Metaphors in Jerome’s Writings to Ascetic Men and Women

Author:

Pålsson Katarina1

Affiliation:

1. Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University: Lunds Universitet , Lund , Sweden

Abstract

Abstract This article examines Jerome’s use of bridal and military imagery in his writings to male and female ascetics. The metaphor of the “bride” and the “soldier” had been used in earlier Christianity to describe the Christian identity of the baptized person, and in the writings of Jerome and other fourth-century ascetic writers, these motifs came to be increasingly employed in discourses on the ascetic life. While previous scholarship has claimed that Jerome mainly used the image of the bride in descriptions of and advise to ascetic women, and military imagery in writings to and about men, the article argues that his employment of these imageries was more complex. It is shown that while the bridal metaphor signals femininity and passivity, and the soldier metaphor manliness and activity, Jerome’s employment of them does not depend first and foremost on the gender of the ascetic. Rather, both images are used to support certain aspects of his theology – mainly his ideas about the postlapsarian, fleshly condition and the human possibility of transcendence – as well as his ascetic ideology, by marking the ascetics as superior to non-ascetics through their unique relationship with Christ.

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH

Reference53 articles.

1. Primary sources

2. Jerome. Adversus Iovinianum, edited by J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 23, 211–338, 1945.

3. Jerome. Commentaria in Epistolam ad Ephesios, edited by J. P. Migne, PL 26, 439–554, 1845.

4. Jerome. Commentarii in Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Galatas, edited by Giacomo Raspanti, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 77A, 2006.

5. Jerome. Contra Rufinum, edited by Pierre Lardet, CCSL 79, 1982.

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