Gerolamo e la pericope del giovane ricco: un pensiero in movimento

Against the idea of the immobility of Jerome’s ascetic vision and against the representation of Jerome as the « persistent advocate of ascetic renunciation » (Peter Brown), the exegesis and the use of the rich man pericope (especially Mt 19, 21) point out an important evolution of the paradigm of perfection in the Gospel. Personal experience, doctrinal disputes and in particular an intense perception of the historical changes make more and more complex Jerome’s framework, in which sometimes conflicting elements coexist, closely connected by a functional complementarity logic. Some well-known letters (Epp. 14, 60, 66 and 130) show that the evangelical text gives him the opportunity to reflect about the radical asceticism with an open attitude to values and realities initially refused and later accepted in a less rigid and exclusive horizon, in which the exemplary stories of Heliodorus, Nepotianus, Pammachius and Demetrias are placed