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Andrew Cain Jerome's Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 Pp. xx + 569. $275.00.
This may seem at first sight an unusual book, devoted wholly to a single letter of Jerome (108). But of course the Epitaphium is much more than a letter, albeit in part a consolatio addressed to Paula's daughter, Eustochium. As the editor reminds us, this was "one of Jerome's finest and most ambitious compositions" (33), and (on the evidence of the surviving manuscripts) "one of the most popular of Jerome's writings during the Middle Ages" (37).
Since the editor is Andrew Cain, the work is marked by breadth, learning, and exhaustive detail. Cain has already laid out for himself a significant path among Hieronymian scholars, and this volume can only enhance further his own reputation and reinforce our gratitude for his labors to date.
The work includes just over fifty pages of a much-improved text and the first competent English translation in more than a century. This is preceded by a judicious introduction that alerts the reader to the main categories of inquiry-biography, literary genre, ascetic theory and practice, the Bethlehem scene, and Paula's enduring reputation. But the central value of the work resides in the nearly 400 pages of original commentary. Our dependence on Cavallera, Rebenich, Nautin, and Duval will not be superseded; but there is thoughtfulness here and lateral allusion that makes a great deal more ready to hand and focused on core concerns.
Paula's death marked a tipping point in Jerome's life, an important caesura between his final years and his heady days of status and influence in the Rome of Damasus in the 380s. He was subsequently less successful in his role as a looming exile, still to be reckoned with among his Latin-speaking acquaintances. His former friend Rufinus, returned to and active in the West from 397, was already a harbinger of his...