Mi Marcella: Jerome, between praise and friendship between the sexes
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Abstract
This work aims to underline some relevant features of emotion and closeness, which allow us to foretaste Jerome's relationship between equals with devout aristocrats, in particular with Marcella, with whom he maintained an intense correspondence, incardinating them with the certain evolution of the concept of friendship that occurs in Western Christianity. The author, known for his misogyny and his relentless attacks on enemies and rivals, confirms the patterns of the letters between equals. The first section deals with general questions about the concept of friendship between equals and how Christian authors use more than the ‘classics’ to disseminate models of collaboration with women, usually from the aristocracy and/or relatives of the early Church Fathers. Secondly, a series of elements of self-praise are pointed out, alternating with others of humiliation addressed to female friends and disciples such as Marcella, Paula and Eustochium. For this purpose, the prologues of biblical commentaries he dedicates to them also serve to assess the real collaboration between men and women in late antiquity Christianity. Finally, the diffusion of this model of friendship between the two sexes is confirmed in the reproduction of some of these formulas intended for Marcella, e.g. in the letter that Gisela and Rodtrud addressed to Alcuin of York and in the Problemata of Heloise, in a letter of Peter Abelard, as well as in the treatise Mystica Ciudad de Dios by María Jesús of Ágreda.
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