The Art - Photography

I approach this carving, after looking at the one of St. Andrew, due it being dated to 1525. There may not be any connection, but writing on the "St. Andrew" carving I have already approached the tragedy of the German Peasants' War of 1524-1525, in which about 100,000 to 300,000 people were killed, and so the fact this sculpture is dated to 1525 stands out to me because of the quality desparate agony observed in the face. That seems like just the kind of horror and despair one would be inclined to give expression to after a veritable slaughter of 100,000 to 300,000 individuals seeking social reform who were brutally squashed by the nobility.

The face expresses great pathos and pain, eyes wide with the unutterable horror of a confrontation with completely insensible death. Near a living skull, the individual pleads for understanding, to be heard, for whatever it knows and has experienced to be granted a voice and recognized. The carving is a memorial into which significant time and care has been devoted bringing to perfection an indelibly traumatized human authenticity.

The carving is given as perhaps representing St. Jerome, and I think that's undeniably the case when one considers other art depicting St. Jerome, but rather than representing St. Jerome I might say instead that St. Jerome has been chosen to represent the despair being communicated. St. Jerome is the approved vehicle for the pain. St. Jerome need not be underground.

St. Jerome was both a scholar and ascetic, so representations of him tend to divide into two forms, the one in which his scholarly attributes are played up, and one in which the focus is on his asceticism, he then typically bald, though usually depicted with a long beard, dressed in an orange-red garment draped over one shoulder, his chest left bare to reveal his self-abuse. St. Jerome practiced an extreme self-denial that involved a life of virtual starvation and self-harm. He promoted self-flagellation and would apparently also beat his chest with a rock, and the statue's chest shows remnants of painted blood. If the head reminds of a skull, Jerome is often represented with a skull and sometimes the words "Cogita Mori", "Think upon death".

Leonardo da Vinci's unfinished St. Jerome is much like this carving, but in da Vinci's ascetic there is a near ecstatic gloating in the satisfaction of self-conferred penitence. This is nowhere present in the carving. He may have blood on his chest, he may be skin-and-bones, but the despair on his face isn't insular and private. It isn't guilt and shame over pleasure, which St. Jerome wanted purged from his life. This isn't the face of an influential and veritable cult leader, which St. Jerome was. There is no pride or vanity here. If there was ever a scholar, he is gone. All that is left is the witness to horror begging all to listen and stop the violence.

Jerome developed a following for whom he served as counselor, urging his asceticism on them, which in the space of four months resulted in the death of one young woman, which enraged Rome. Though Jerome fanatically promoted chastity (much of his asceticism was due guilt over sexual thoughts), he was accused of having improper relations with the young woman's mother, an individual named Paula, who was also a follower, a wealthy widow who financed Jerome's life and projects. Devastated by her daughter's death, Paula was scolded by Jerome for excessive grief. Jerome held that her daughter shouldn't be mourned, and that Paula was indeed fortunate the daughter had died as it was a dissolving of another of Paula's earthly bonds. When he was expelled from Rome for his suspected improprieties, Paula accompanied him, along with another daughter who was also a devotee, leaving behind the remainder of her children who weren't followers and with whom Paula had to break all ties as she was consecrated to a greater good. In Bethlehem, they started a joint monastery/convent that attracted a great number of visitors, due Jerome's fame, his focus being on instructing women on how to live a consecrated life. All three are now saints, real people all of them, not imaginary characters.

Jerome sounds like your classic, abusive, cult leader. Paula was constantly ill from starvation, and it sounds like starvation was the cause of her death.

The following quote attests to Jerome's character.

A priest, Jerome, dwelt in the same place [Bethlehem]; he was a man of good birth and well gifted in Latin letters, but he had such a disposition that it eclipsed his learning. Posidonius [a hermit of Bethlehem] had lived with him a goodly number of days and he whispered into my ear: "The fine Paula who takes care of him is going to die and escape his meanness, I believe. And because of him no holy man will live in these parts. His anger would drive out even his own brother." Palladius, Palladius: The Lausiac History, trans. Meyer, pp. 104-05.

It's said that Jerome recognized his anger was a problem and would beat himself with the stone in order to quell his rage.

Jerome's intimate letters to potential female followers wooed them with comparisons of the consecrated life to The Song of Solomon, the pain and denial of the ascetic a path to ecstacy and union with the divine. He would detail for them how his libidinous urges tortured him.

Jerome died in 420 A.D. He was beatified by Benedict XIV in 1747 and canonized by Clement XIII in 1787. Because he was a scholar and translator, cheerful Jerome is your saint if you're a librarian, translator, scholar or student.

He's sometimes depicted with a lion because the story is that a lion entered his monastery, and while others fled, Jerome, who was always kind and looking for good things to do for others, upon realizing the lion was in pain and that a thorn in its paw was the source, got the tweezers and pulled it. The fable, its protagonist first being an Androclus, was first recorded in the 2nd century. It would take until the thirteenth century for it to become associated with St. Jerome via "The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voraigne", a compilation of the traditional lore of the saints, which was a best seller. People enjoyed reading gory stories about martyrs.

I don't see the ecstatic self-flagellant Jerome in this statue. And of course I could be wrong, but I do wonder at St. Jerome being possibly an accepted avenue through which to depict horror and despair that otherwise might not find a voice.

There was considerable grief to be expressed in 1525.

My other photos of this carving

View the High Museum's photo record of carving

The Carving was a gift of Mrs. Irma N. Straus in memory of her husband, Jesse Isidor Straus, Ambassador to France under President Franklin D. Roosevelt

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