The care of the dead saint in Jerome’s Lives of Holy Men

Gray, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0293-4301 (2026) The care of the dead saint in Jerome’s Lives of Holy Men. Journal of Late Antiquity. ISSN 1942-1273 (In Press)

Abstract/Summary

This paper explores the literary and the wider socio-cultural contexts of the presentation of burial practices in Athanasius’s Life of Antony, its two Latin translations, and Jerome’s three Lives of Paul, Malchus, and Hilarion. At the heart of the discussion is Antony’s request for his body to be buried in secret and for his tomb to remain hidden, which is narrated in Athanasius’ text (V. Ant. 91.6–7) and revisited in Jerome’s Life of Hilarion. Jerome’s reuse multiplies the interpretive potential of Antony’s request by shifting the secrecy to a different layer: Hilarion asks the surviving disciples of Antony – the only persons who know the secret of his tomb’s location – to be shown the place, and the text leaves open the question whether Hilarion’s request was granted (V. Hilar. 21.9–10). In the light of Jerome’s playful engagement with the challenge posed by Athanasius’s text, the paper then addresses historical anxieties around the display of dead bodies. It concludes with a discussion of the supplementation and/or replacement in these texts of the saint’s physical remains with other relics, such as clothing, and with commemorative practices that include hagiography itself.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/131049
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies (GCMS) Arts, Humanities and Social Science > Language Text and Power Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Humanities > Classics
Publisher	Johns Hopkins University Press
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item