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The Martyrdom of Jerome

In The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism, Geoffrey Harpham states that "the unrelenting ambition of these people [the early ascetics] was precisely to eliminate the 'hors-texte' from their existence, to become their own texts" (15). Patricia Cox Miller supports this claim by demonstrating in her article "The Blazing Body: Ascetic Desire in Jerome's Letter to Eustochium" (J. Early Christian Studies 1 [1993]: 21-45) that Jerome, exhorting Eustochium to virginity, transforms her into a text, (re)writing her body by figuring her as an embodiment of Scripture from the Song of Songs. Miller states, however, that Jerome encountered problems when he tried to rewrite his own body into a text using feminine virginal Scriptural tropes as he had for Eustochium: "[The Songs of Songs] was not a language that was available to Jerome for the erotic textualization of his own body. ... He did not have available to him the kind of erotically-charged metaphor of desire that he used to construct Eustochium's body as ascetic text." She claims that Jerome was unable "to find a Scriptural metaphor that would, by textualizing his body, safely remove him from the fiery libido of the flesh", because the metaphor of the virginal bride of Christ was not easily applicable to his male body (32-33). However, I think that Jerome indeed did find a "Scriptural metaphor" suitable for writing himself a pure virginal body. Harpham provides essential insight when he says that "for the early Christians textuality was closely linked with martyrdom" (14). I would like to propose that the trope with which Jerome chose to inscribe himself revolved around the notion of martyrdom, specifically the martyrdom of Christ. That Jerome martyrs himself by becoming text is obvious. For one thing, he effectively kills his physical presence to Eustochium simply by writing to her. Jerome is "motivated by the desire to die to the world, to be transfigured into another, purer mode of being. Speaking, he is all too human; writing, he communicates through the dead letter, as though he were already dead" (Harpham 15). Jerome could easily have chosen in-