Ivan Bodrožić: The Christological Ideal of Jerome's ascetic model for women according to his Commentary on Ephesians

In his comments and interpretation of the Epistle to the Ephesians (Eph5:28), St. Jerome asserts that a husband ought to love his wife as he loves his own body. Moreover, as the body is a vessel of the human soul, so a woman ought to be complementary to a man, because she has been assigned a different role in relation to a man (especially childbirth). But when the woman decides to serve Christ more than the world she ceases to be the woman and is called the man (lat. vir). Referring to the Epistle to the Ephesians (5: 28-29), St. Jerome explicitly says that men ought to take care of women and treat them the way as they are transformed into men.However, it has been less pointed out that Jerome was led by the Christological motives in dealing with this issue. For, it was not enough for the woman to become the man biologically or anthropologically, but rather spiritually and ascetically. The true man (vir perfectus) is only Christ, so the woman aims to Christ’s likeness. Hence, it can be inferred from this that the ascetic ideal associated with the woman is not only the external virtue but conformity to the likeness of Christ. Therefore, Jerome's view on female asceticism is as Christological as the concept of the perfect man (both the woman and the man), which is based on the perfection of Christ.