HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

136 THOMAS J. HEFFERNANtype in his narratives. Paul, Hilarion, and Malchus fail to appropriatethe figure of the classical teacher to the extent that Anthonydoes. Although Jerome’s saints’ lives are rich in citations from hisfavorite authors (Cicero, Sallust, Vergil, and Florus), by the time hecomposes the Life of Malchus his allusions are chiefly scriptural. Jeromemoves away from the model of the rational sage to distance himselffrom the classics and to dramatize the power of God’s grace and itsability to reshape the natural world. The world of wonder and miracleis the arena where Jerome finds grace and faith cooperating.Although Athanasius does underscore the devil’s place in Anthony’sstruggle, he rarely dramatizes the attributes of Satan. Jerome, however,to an unprecedented degree depicts fantastic visions, speakingbeasts, the ravages of asceticism, fantastic depictions of Satan, andfearful exorcisms. The immediacy with which we grasp the horriblerigors of Hilarion’s diet may reflect Jerome’s own struggles with hisself-debasement. In Jerome’s three saint’s lives, for the first time inChristian biography, a deliberate effort is made to bridge the epistemologicalbarrier separating the historical and the fictive, the fantasticand the factual. Jerome absorbed the opposing forces of thesetwo experiential planes of the real and the meta-real, yet struggledto maintain the “historical sequence of my narrative”, as he says inthe Life of Hilarion. 52 For example, in his Life of St. Paul Jerome depictsSt. Anthony’s journey to find the hermit Paul, during which he meetsa fantastic horned Manikin. The saint asks him to identify himself.The beast replies that he worships Christ. This provokes in Anthonya prayer in celebration of Christ and a curse on Alexandria wherethey worship beasts as gods. Here in the purity of the desert theuncontaminated beasts worship Christ: “Woe to you, Alexandria,because you worship monsters for God! [Here] Beasts speak thename of Christ”. 53 Jerome, aware of the possible ridicule such anecdotesmight cause, offers a two-fold defense: first, he appeals to historyand notes that a fantastic beast was recently brought and displayedin Constantinople; second, he paraphrases Scripture that “. . . allthings are possible for God and those who have faith”. 54 The new52Jerome, “Life of St. Hilarion”, in Early Christian Biographies, 241–80, at 251.53Jerome, “Life of St. Paul, the First Hermit”, in Early Christian Biographies, 225–38,at 231.54Jerome, “Life of St. Paul”, 231.