Resumen de Jerome's Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae

Philip Rousseau (res.)

• Since the editor is Andrew Cain, the work is marked by breadth, learning, and exhaustive detail. Jerome, according to Cain, was anxious to reverse the traditional sequence and attribute Paula's exegetical astuteness, her spiritual insight, to her later ascetic devotion, so that a shift in practice (the very renunciation of inherited privilege) underpinned the qualities of mind to be most admired. The romanitas displayed, the amicitia and disciplina, was not overwhelmed by a force beyond itself or thrust aside in the interest of some alien sensitivity; it was fostered within the heart of antiquity and suffused a long-standing capacity for emotive surrender, moral rigor, and persuasive style, upon which it depended as much as it transformed.