Ad historiam latiorem. Il prologo della Vita Malchi di Gerolamo tra storiografia e retorica

The Vita Malchi (certainly written before 392), the shortest of Jerome’s three Vitae of hermits (alongside the earlier Vita Pauli and the contemporary Vita Hilarionis), is an interesting example of a mixture of historiography, hagiography, epic and ancient novel. The Vita Malchi begins with a prologue (chapter 1) in which Jerome presents the work as an exercise to break the long silence that has been imposed on him and to prepare for the composition of a substantial and wider history of the Church (...ut venire possim ad historiam latiorem). In this paper, particular attention is paid to the style and rhetorical devices deployed in the prologue. A close reading analyzes its internal structure with a discussion of lexical borrowings and sources, rhetorical features and different registers (historiography and rhetoric), words and expressions apparently taken from ancient pagan authors (viz. Quintilian and Sallust). This demonstrates Jerome’s literary background and his engagement with it.