Katarina Pålsson: Virgins and priests: Jerome on female sanctity in the context of late fourth century debates over asceticism

In the debates over Christian asceticism during the end of the fourth century, arguments tended to centre specifically around female asceticism, and there is good reason to understand these conflicts partly in terms of a discourse of female spiritual authority. The celibate life certainly provided women with a degree of authority that they would not otherwise achieve, and resistance against lay asceticism often went hand in hand with resistance against female authority in the church. The present paper deals with Jerome's defense of the superiority of virginity in the context of these debates, and more precisely on how he used the virginal ideal to promote the spiritual authority of celibate women. Jerome clearly had motives for doing this: He based, to a great extent, his own spiritual authority on that of his female disciples. Not being a bishop himself and often at odds with ecclesiastical authorities, Jerome sought to construct a hierarchy of Christians which was not identical to the visible, ecclesiastical one. It implied an understanding of priesthood as an inner state rather than something accomplished through ordination. Instead, it depended on a person's degree of purity; a purity achieved not only from sexual abstinence but from seclusion from the “world” in a wider sense. I aim to demonstrate that in the debates over asceticism, Jerome sought to promote female spiritual authority by ascribing priestly attributes and functions to female celibates, and presenting them as the perfect priests.