04 — The Wonderworker
The miracles that made Hilarion famous and that fill the central chapters of Jerome’s Life: the healings of the sick, the castings-out of demons, and the celebrated set-pieces — the Christian charioteer who beat his pagan rival, the possessed Bactrian camel, the stilling of a tidal wave at Epidaurus, the breaking of a drought. These files report the wonders as Jerome’s own claims, pinned to the chapters of the Vita per the methodology, and read them in the hagiographic context that gives them their meaning, without certifying them as historical fact.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; father of Palestinian monasticism)
The wonders are the heart of the Life as a piece of devotional literature, and the chief reason the crowds came. They must be handled with the care the repository’s methodology requires (METHODOLOGY §3.5): a miracle account is reported as the testimony of its source, named and pinned to its text, never adjudicated as bare event. These files therefore present the wonders as what Jerome attests, set them beside their models in Athanasius’s Antony and their function in Jerome’s narrative, and let the reader see both the devotion they express and the literary art that shapes them. The historicity of the wonders as a class is weighed in Section 05.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Healings and Exorcisms | The miracles of healing and deliverance as reported by Jerome and pinned to the Life (METHODOLOGY §3.5): the first healing of a barren woman’s affliction; the cures of paralytics and the blind; the great category of exorcisms; the breaking of drought and the stilling of the sea at Epidaurus; the ascetic-theological frame in which Jerome sets them. |
| The Chariot Race and the Camel | The two most famous wonders read in hagiographic context: the Christian charioteer Italicus whose horses Hilarion blessed against his pagan rival’s magic (Jerome, Life of Hilarion 11/20), and the raging Bactrian camel brought bound to be exorcised; what these episodes meant against the magic and paganism of the Gaza region, and how to read them per the methodology. |
See Also
- The Pattern of Solitude — the ascetic life from which the wonders are said to flow
- The Visitation of Crowds — the fame the wonders generated
- Jerome’s Life of Hilarion — the literary character of the miracle narratives
- The Historical Hilarion — how the wonders are weighed historically
References
- Jerome. Life of Hilarion (Vita Hilarionis). Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 6. 1893; and trans. Carolinne White, Early Christian Lives. London: Penguin, 1998.
- Athanasius. Life of Antony (Vita Antonii). (The model for the miracle and exorcism narratives.)
- Weingarten, Susan. The Saint’s Saints: Hagiography and Geography in Jerome. Leiden: Brill, 2005.