Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1 Athanase D' Alexandrie, VieD' Antoine, ed. G.]. M. Bartelink, SCh 400,
Paris 1994.
2 I adopt here the traditional opinion about Athanasius' authorship of
Vita Antonii although I am conscious of the serious argumentation to the
contrary which has persisted these past twenty years. For the subject matter
of this research, however, this question is of secondary importance.
3 The date of the Vita Antonii has been the subject of two articles: L. W.
Barnard, The date of S. Athanasius'Vita Antonii, in Vigiliae Christianae, 28
(1974), pp. 169-175 and the answer given to this paper by B. Brennan, Dating
Athanasius' Vita Antonii, in Vigiliae Christianae 30 (1976), pp. 52-54. Although
both scholars tried to determine the precise date, their attempts have been
less than satisfactory.
418 P. NEHRING
Prologue of the Vita Antonii indicates that Athanasius had sent the
Life to monks living overseas. There is no identification of a
particular place. We are given to understand that he had in mind
people who were taking their first steps in asceticism, individuals
whom the bishop of Alexandria had met during his enforced travels
in the West. The work would become popular, what we might
anachronistically call "a best seller", because of its Latin versions
which appeared very soon. About ten years after the Greek original
had been written, two distinct translations into Latin were in
circulation. 4 The Latin version of Evagrius of Antioch quickly
surpassed and virtually eclipsed its Greek original in the West to
such an extent that the Life now widely known as the Vita Antonii
won pride of place as the canon for the nascent corpus of early
Christian hagiography, both Greek and Latin.
The propaganda aims realized in the Vita Antonii and the
author's wish to write a kind of panegyric on Antony strongly
influenced its rhetorical character. The purposes Athanasius in-
tended - praise of the ascetic way of life, encouragement to imitate
Antony, but also the condemnation of schismatics and the exhi-
bition of Christian domination over pagan culture and religion -
could be largely reinforced by the employment of rhetorical devices.
Analysis of the composition of the Vita Antonii in the light of
classical rhetoric permits us to conclude that each part of the text,
because of its function and conscious use of rhetorical devices,
corresponds for various reasons to the classical parts of an oration.
Its Prooimion was constructed in the manner of the best technique of
ancient rhetorical theory. That part of the work which describes the
life of the saint in a chronological pattern constitutes the narratio.
The wonders and miracles attributed to Antony confirm the main
thesis of the work - the sanctity of the hermit - and as such they
correspond to the function of the classical argumentatio. The Life
concludes with an elenchus of virtues attesting to Antony's sanctity.
The final sumr-nation of the more important features the author had
included in his work has much in common with the character of the
rhetorical epilogus. The persuasive power and credibility of the story
about Antony, narrated according to the traditional rhetorical
format of an classical oratio noted above, is a conspicuous feature of
the Vita. Only deliberate self-conscious efforts on the part of the
author could have succeeded in bringing this about. 5
An important role in the implantation and circulation of ideas
characteristic of Egyptian monasticism into western thought was
played by one of the most eminent Christian writers from the late-
fourth and early-fifth-centuries - St. Jerome and his Lives of the
Hermits (Vita Pauli; Vita Hilarionis; Vita Malchi). He was superbly well-
educated and one of the more erudite people of his time with roots
in both the West and the East where he encountered distinctive
theological and literary cultures. Jerome's published legacy often
reveals a rich amalgam of eastern and western intellectual and
spiritual inspiration.
The Vita Hilarionis,6 written between 390 and 396, was in western
literature the first original example of a literary type - a life of a
monk. 7 With this work the author transferred on to the ground of
Latin a literary genre which had been created by Athanasius.Jerome
referred to the book of Athanasius in his previous romance Vita
Pauli8 (ca. 377), but its obvious dependence on the Vita A ntonii
derives from the subject (the quest of primate among Egyptian
monks), not the formal literary structure. Vita Hilarionis with its
biographical design could be treated as a proper Vita of a saint, that
is to say, an attempt to show the entire life of the protagonist in
PL ed. Bastiaensen
I. Prologue 1 I
II. Beginnings of Hilarion' s life till his 2-3 11,1-11,8
undertalking of ascetism
III. Ascetisim of the protagonist 4-12 II,9-VI
IV. Miracles effected by Hilarion 13-23 VII-XIV
V. Hilarion as monastic founder and 24-28 XV-XVIII
spiritual master in Syria and Palestine
VI. His asceticism, wonder-working power 29-43 XIX-XXXI
and, linked to it, his fame
VII. Last will, death and funeral of Hilarion 44-47 XXXII-XXXIII
1. Prologue
Eorum enim, qui jecere, virtus, ut ait Crispus, tanta habetur quantum eam
verbis potuere extollere praeclara ingenia. Alexander Magnus Macedo, quem
vel aes vel pardum vel hircum caprarum Daniel vocat, cum ad Achillis
tumulum pervenisset: Felicem te, ait, 0 iuvenis, qui magno frueris
praecone meritorum, Homerum videlicet significans. (Vita Hilarionis 1,2-3;
cf. Sallust, De coniuratione Catilinae 8,4) .
This sentence gives in its gnomic form the reasons for the
necessity of describing the acts of outstanding persons. The source
of this quotation was probably secondary rather than primary. We
find the same thought in other prologues of literary works dating
from this epoch. Especially interesting is the passage from the
prologue to the Vita Probi in Scriptores Historiae Augustae:
Hilarion to Jesus Christ himself, and Paul the Hermit to John the
Baptist. We detect in these instances a literary convention, whereby
the author compares the protagonists of the Lives, written by
himself, to principal figures from the New Testament, thus adding
biblical verisimilitude to his work. Such comparisons were common
for this literary genre. Monks were often identified with Elijah, their
Old Testament ideal, or his successor, Elisha. Sometimes the virtue
of the saint has been amplified by comparison to Christ himself.
Jerome, terminates the prologue to the Vita Hilarionis with such a
syncrisis, also adds there the "topos of the truth". Although the
protagonists of the early Vitae of saints had had their real
archetypes, they were, of course, consciously createclliterary figures.
So the author was obliged to declare in the prologue to the Vita,
that the account of the saint depicted by the ,vriter in a
hagiographical genre was \vholly wortllY ofbclief.
A well-constructed prologue, therefore, to J. literalY ,york in
which the author declared his rnodesty, thus revealed the dignity of
the subject of the task at hand. rrhis further confirlned the overall
credibility of the story, which could then becoDlc decisive in gaining
favour of the readers and helpful to,vards effectively influencing
them.
24 Cf. A. Dihle, Das Gewand des Einsiedlers Antonius, in jahrbuch fur Antike
und Christentum 22 (1979), pp. 22-29.
25 For the relationship between Suetonian genre of biography and early
Christian lives of the saints, cf. G. Luck, Die Form der Suetonischen Biographie
JEROME'S VITA HILARIONIS A RHETORICAL ANAL)SIS OF ITS STRUCTURE 427
und die friihen Heiligenviten, in Mullus, Festschrift Th. Klauser UahrlYuch fur
Antike und Christentum, Erganzungsbd.1], Munster Wt. 1964, pp. 231-241.
26 Cf. Aphtonius, Progymnasmata, 11,22.
428 P. NEHRING
for the act. Four features were required for its articulation: a)
perspicuity, b) brevity, c) conviction and d) clarity of language.
The narration of such miracles performed by Hilarion,
patterned according the above schema, were hallmarks of its
veracity. To strengthen the case as much as possible, the author was
expected to insert descriptions of supernatural events and historical
details, such as: names of individuals healed by the saint (Vita
Hilarionis VIII; XIII), topographical details which had helped to
situate the act in existing places (id., IX; XI; XII) or other
circumstances, for instance the horse-race in Gaza, which provided
the probable context for the story which had been told (id., XI).
Jerome fulfilled all these requirements.
The first wonders worked by Hilarion - the healing of a barren
woman, the healing of the children of Aristenete - can be
interpreted as rhetorical diegemata, but the best illustration of this
form seems to be a story about the horse-race in Gaza ( Vita
Hilarionis XI). Hilarion (the acting person) helped the Christian
owner of racehorses to win a race against a pagan competitor,
believer of Marnas (the act) .The saint offered water to the horse-
breeder to enable him to sprinkle the horses, stable and charioteers
(the manner of acting). This event happened in Gaza, the town where
many believers of Marnas lived (the place). Mter long hesitation
Hilarion decided to go through with this act. Personal motivation
prompted him to demonstrate the superiority of Christ over the
superstitious power of Marnas, the god of a rival pagan in the race
( the reason for the act) .
The sequence of the wondrous deeds narrated in Jerome's work
furnish evidence of some regularity. First, we observe a series of
healings of bodily diseases, then assaults upon diseases of the soul in
the fornl of exorcisms and, in the end, the acts worked by Hilarion
against pagan magic. Descriptions of Hilarion's supernatural activity
very often mirrored the pictures of wonders from the Gospel, such
individuals performing healings as well as exorcisms. The biblical
archetype of such tales reminds the reader of the wonders worked
by Jesus himself and invites comparison between the two
protagonists - a rhetorical device - which as a result heightens the
virtue of Hilarion. The best instance seems to be a story about the
healing worked by Hilarion on the blind woman. The saint
performed this miracle after the example ofJesus even to the point
JEROME'S VITA HILA RlONIS' A RHETORlCt\L ANALYSIS OF ITS STRUCTURE 429
of moistening her eyes with human spittle (Vita Hilarionis X). The
only difference in the conflation of the two episodes is that the
Johannine account (10.9) tells the story of a male.
The first sentence of chapter XV: Tempus me deJiciet, si voluero
universa signa, quae ab eo perpetrata sunt, dicere, concludes the section
on Hilarion as a thaumaturgus. Although we meet the protagonist as
a wonder-worker in later chapters of Vita Hilarionis, there is no other
place where one finds such an acculllulation of miraculous stories.
Their great number here is accounted for by its argumentative
function in the biography. Their main purpose was to confirm the
holiness of the protagonist by exhibiting his supernatural power and
God's unusual protection of hiln. This seems, therefore, to fulfil the
argunlentative function for the main proposition, submitted usually
at the beginning of the Life, on the perfection of the saint who is
presented to Christian readers as a model for inlitation. In Vita
Hilarionis, as well as in Vita Antonii and other lives of the sain ls, we
are entitled to interpret that part of the 'York, which contains the
collection of nliraculous stories, as a hagiographic argumentatio.
Because of the subject and literary genre, the descriptions of
wonders in this instance replaced classical rhetorical arguments in
the form of enthymemes and paradigms. Hagiographers adduce the
truth confirmed by God's authority and, therefore, have no need of
dialectical approval. Such theological argumentation, because of its
own peculiar and persuasive efficacy, became popular in Christian
rhetoric.
27 Cf. Aristoteles, Ars rhetorica 13G8a; see Vita Antonii 14; Vita Pauli 2-6.
28 Cf. Aphtonius, PTogymnasmata II, 21.
29 Cf. Vita Antonii 63.
JEROME'S VITA HlLARIONISA RHETORICALANAL\'SIS OF ITS STRUCTURE 431
32 Cf. Mt. 9,5-6; Me. 2,9-11; 5,41-42; Le. 7,14; 10. 5,8; Acts. 3,6.
JEROME'S Vni-\ HlLARIONISA RHETORICAL ANAL\SIS OF ITS STRUCTURE 433
5. Epilogus
Conclusion
PRZEMYSLAwNEHRING
Nicholas Copernicus University,
Torun, Poland