The Monk and the Book - by Megan Hale Williams (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In the West, monastic ideals and scholastic pursuits are complementary; monks are popularly imagined copying classics, preserving learning through the Middle Ages, and establishing the first universities. But this dual identity is not without its contradictions. While monasticism emphasizes the virtues of poverty, chastity, and humility, the scholar, by contrast, requires expensive infrastructure-a library, a workplace, and the means of disseminating his work. In The Monk and the Book, Megan Hale Williams argues that Saint Jerome was the first to represent biblical study as a mode of asceticism appropriate for an inhabitant of a Christian monastery, thus pioneering the enduring linkage of monastic identities and institutions with scholarship.

Revisiting Jerome with the analytical tools of recent cultural history-including the work of Bourdieu, Foucault, and Roger Chartier-Williams proposes new interpretations that remove obstacles to understanding the life and legacy of the saint. Examining issues such as the construction of Jerome's literary persona, the form and contents of his library, and the intellectual framework of his commentaries, Williams shows that Jerome's textual and exegetical work on the Hebrew scriptures helped to construct a new culture of learning. This fusion of the identities of scholar and monk, Williams shows, continues to reverberate in the culture of the modern university.

"[Williams] has written a fascinating study, which provides a series of striking insights into the career of one of the most colorful and influential figures in Christian antiquity. Jerome's Latin Bible would become the foundational text for the intellectual development of the West, providing words for the deepest aspirations and most intensely held convictions of an entire civilization. Williams's book does much to illumine the circumstances in which that fundamental text was produced, and reminds us that great ideas, like great people, have particular origins, and their own complex settings."-Eamon Duffy, New York Review of Books

Review Quotes

"She has written a fascinating study, which provides a series of striking insights into the career of one of the most colorful and influential figures in Christian antiquity. Jerome's Latin Bible would become the foundational text for the intellectual development of the West, providing words for the deepest aspirations and most intensely held convictions of an entire civilization. Williams's book does much to illumine the circumstances in which that fundamental text was produced, and reminds us that great ideas, like great people, have particular origins, and their own complex settings."

--Eamon Duffy "New York Review of Books" (3/29/2007 12:00:00 AM)

"An important book about the culture of books and a valuable acquisition for scholars and libraries."--Michael Heintz "Religious Studies Review"

"As a monk and a lover of books . . . I thoroughly enjoyed allowing the author to immerse me in Jerome's world: the narrow world of the ascetic and the wider one of patronage and readership."--Benedict M. Guevin "American Benedictine Review"

"The author has greatly increased readers' understanding not only of Jerome, but also of the nature of the Biblical commentary itself. She should be congratulated on providing readers with an intelligent, highly readable and thought-provoking book."--Marilyn Dunn, Historian--Marilyn Dunn "Historian"

"This is an immensely readable book that, without artifice or invention, gives us a picture of Jerome's desk and the books that surrounded it, while allowing a clear view through the window onto the world that both threatened and supported him."--Padraig o Caoimh "Downside Review"

"Williams has written a provocative book, for it encourages us to look behind Jerome's rather difficult and oft-studied personal and theological conflicts with his contemporaries to view him in the light of his importance in the history of late-antique education and book culture."--Michele Renee Salzman "Speculum"

"Williams' meticulously detailed book richly evokes the world of Jerome in all its complexity and will be the 'standard' treatment of his life and legacy for many decades. Rather than resting on previous scholarship, she strikes new ground by using insights from cultural studies and the assessment of the practices of everyday life to make a fresh assessment of Jerome. Her work is based on thorough and painstaking analysis of his writings in their own context. She brings to light the process of how these writings were produced, the wider situations that they addressed, the paraphernalia and framework that enabled their emergence, and the way in which they were collated, circulated, and preserved."--J. Jayakiran Sepastian "Interpretation"

About the Author

Megan Hale Williams is associate professor of history at San Francisco State University. She is coauthor, with Anthony Grafton, of Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea.