Miles Make the Mind: Jerome on Travel, Learning, and Knowledge Exchange

Abstract

Travel and mobility for “leisure” were characteristic of the privileged few in the world of Late Antiquity. Therefore, they should be interpreted as status symbols. Although basic education was by-and-large accessible, undertaking long-distance travel to study with the brightest minds of one’s time was not. Jerome cleverly fashions himself as a mobile person who went to study under Donatus in Rome; he went on to learn from desert fathers, exchanged ideas in Constantinople, studied in Alexandria. As such, he emphasises his social status to prove he is a match for peers and patrons. In this chapter, I will first demonstrate how exactly Jerome created this profile, with particular focus on his early letters. Subsequently, I will show how he employs the existing “Grand Tour” models, and incorporates them into his epistolary exchange with his patrons: his (prospective) “students”. Naturally, it is clear that by then Jerome is the teacher who should be visited by his students, again, putting himself on par with (ancient) viri illustres. Yet, his own ideas – put to paper – have become mobile, also. If his correspondents cannot visit the teacher, at least they will have the opportunity to access his teachings. In sum, if one had the means, one could cover great distances to expand the mind and count oneself among the “happy few” who, in the footsteps of the great classics, are worthy of memoria dignus.