Silvia Georgieva: Training a Christian like a Pagan Orator: The Greek-Roman “paideia” and its Christian transformation in the letters of Jerome

The focus of this study comes on St. Jerome’s approach
towards the raising and education of a child, devoted to God, as he expresses
it in his epistles to women and children. Jerome literally follows the
practical guidance of Quintilian, included in his “Institutio оratoria“, that was published
several centuries earlier and which outlines the appropriate form of
instruction for boys – future rhetoricians. The association with the Greek-Roman paideia and its Christian modification (its focus on the instruction of children as future Christian ascetics) is evident in the pedagogical approach of the Church father.This
talk discusses the visible traces of classical education in Jerome's epistles: theLatin quotations from the exemplary pieces of Roman prose and poetry as well as the Ancient Greek quotationsfrom the
great works of epic and drama.The
philological analysis of the epistolary
texts to children and their parents clearly reveals Jerome's didactic and
pedagogical methods in teaching and promoting theChristian doctrine.In
keeping with the general idea of the symposium, this talk presents a new
perspective on the traditional „pagan-Christian“ opposition in the works of the Churchfather: the classical education and the pedagogical
methods related to linguistic and literary instruction at this stage of development
of Christian culture are considered as the basic means of creating a new
religious and cultural community and of a new kind of erudition, based on
common intellectual heritage.