Georgios Panagopoulos: St. Jerome’s Letter I ad Innocentium Presbyterum : An new hermeneutical Approach

The new interpretation of the 1st Epistle of St. Jerome we intend to propose here consists in a rereading based primarily on the religious – anthropological theory of Rene Girard, in an attempt to cast light to the structural elements of Jerome’s description of the Martyrdom of a Christian woman and evaluate its social - anthropological evidences under the light of a modern interpretative model.R. Girard has pursued a line of inquiry across fields of humanities and literary critics. His anthropological Theory – known better as the mimetic theory – has been constructed as a result of a livelong engagement with the basic literary monuments of our civilization and it sought to provide an interpretative account of the religious’ origins. Using mythological texts but also the Gospels’ description of Jesus’ Passion as a paradigm, Girard undertakes to interpret the origin of our civilization in terms of a mimetic escalated collective violence, which represents for the human communities a terrible threat of destruction, unless they find the solution which Girard describes a the “Scapegoat mechanism”.The ultimate purpose of this communication is to show, on the basis of the paradigmatic account of Jerome’s Letter I we provide, the new perspectives Girard’s theory opens to the study as well as to the understanding of patristic texts.