This monograph emerged from R.'s dissertation at the University of Konstanz. In a mixed methods approach, it combines computer-based digital and manual hermeneutic procedures to make cultural transformation processes in Christian late antiquity visible. The two objects of comparison are Virgil's Aeneid and Jerome's letters.
Jerome's famous dream description, which tackles his dealings as a Christian with classical–pagan literature, is the starting point. Virgil's Aeneid plays an important role both for the Romans’ understanding of identity and for school teaching in general, but especially for Jerome, who studied under the famous exegete Aelius Donatus. Quotes of Virgil's Aeneid in Jerome's letters are understood by R. as ‘Markierungen der literarischen Verarbeitung kultureller Transformationsprozesse’ (p. 18).
The publication pursues the dual question after the ‘literarischen Verhandlungsstrategien der kulturellen Hybridisierungsprozesse der christlichen Spätantike des 4. und 5. Jahrhunderts’ (p. 4) and the profit of digital textual analysis procedures as part of the methodology of Latinist literary studies.
The study of quotations in Jerome's works has a long scholarly tradition. Given the size of Jerome's corpus and his literary skill, it is hardly surprising that citations continue to be discovered nonetheless. This also explains R.'s computerised approach, which is a novelty in Hieronymian research. Such a method allows R. to test out a more systematic and holistic approach than individual studies can otherwise provide.
R. works with a lexical-semantic definition of citation that is indebted to her mixed methods approach. Accordingly, a quotation must consist of at least two exactly identical word forms. Structural, motivic, metrical etc. similarities between Virgil's and Jerome's text are thus excluded.
Reliable digitisations of the two corpora in XML data format are needed to carry out the computer-assisted text analysis procedures. While the Virgilian text is accessible in the Perseus Digital Library, R. has emended a digitisation of Jerome's letters on the basis of Hilberg's edition (CSEL 54–6), transferred it into EpiDoc-TEI-XML and fed it into the Tesserae-corpus, which is used for text comparison. The digitisation of Jerome's letters is now available in open access – except for letters 18* to Praesidius and 27* to Aurelius of Carthage, which would have been another useful addition over the print edition – in the Open Greek and Latin Projects and provides great added value for further computer assisted research. It will allow intertextuality, Hieronymian and epistolary researchers to extend future studies to more primary texts with minimal effort.
The two corpora are automatically compared with each other sentence by sentence for quotations, i.e. for at least two identical word forms. The results are narrowed down by filtering processes and the thus machine-generated pre-selection is analysed and interpreted manually-hermeneutically. R. interpreted and evaluated about 10% (numerically 24) of the pre-selected results as actual citation finds. In a chapter that almost reads as a guide for further computer-assisted intertextuality works, she describes the creation of the algorithm for filtering processes. This chapter is also of high value in terms of the transparency of the results. What proves particularly clear with regard to the self-understanding of the work as a test for a mixed methods approach in intertextuality research is that R. not only describes the eventual analysis procedure, but also explains which methodological approaches have previously failed and for what reason. Only the fact that R. does not work with lemmas, but with tokens, could possibly be criticised, as this approach intensifies the return to an exclusively lexical notion of citation. Thereby, potential results are omitted, as for example a quotation consisting of only two words, which adapts a verb to the person of the speaker or addressee (see e.g. K. Schwerdtner, Plinius und seine Klassiker [2015], p. 33 on the exactness of quotations). R. writes about Jerome's citation technique: ‘Für die aufgezeigte flexible Zitierpraxis war daher wohl eine gewisse Auflösung der Quellentexte nötig. Diese Textauflösung musste die Formulierungen aus ihrer syntagmatischen Textumgebung [zumindest in Ansätzen] in eine paradigmatische Struktur überführen, sodass relevante Formulierungen oder Textstellen leicht ausgewählt oder gezielt und je nach Bedarf des Zieltextes in diesen eingefügt werden konnten’ (p. 324). Regarding the operationalisation, however, this approach is understandable, as it excludes many false finds.
On the basis of the retained Aeneid quotes, R. establishes a typology of Jerome's citation usages in seven categories: Virgilian language colouring, Virgilian syntagma, suggested addition, corrective finding, convergent comparison, divergent comparison, decontextualisation. The typology as well as the classification of the 24 new finds into these categories may remain controversial in individual cases, despite good justification, but this is also implied by R. in her formulation ‘favoured citation type’. R.'s new finds allow interesting interpretations of individual passages, even if some may be exposed to the reproach of overinterpretation. In these individual interpretations R. strives not only to present the lexical correspondence, but also to work out parallels in content and narrative, which ultimately allow her to decide whether it is a quote or not. Also interesting are her double-directed reflections on how, on the one hand, Virgil's text affects Jerome's, and on the other hand, how the Aeneid is received by Christian readers through the quotation. For the question of cultural transformation processes, precisely these questions are crucial and reveal ‘dass das klassisch-heidnische Epos im Gestus wohlwollend und in zustimmender Aufnahmehaltung in den Text eingewebt wird’ (p. 321).
The previously known quotes are also sorted according to R.'s typology and presented in a shorter, tabular form in the appendix. This allows her to show that the new finds are mostly of a different nature than those already found manually, which in turn provides conclusions about the mixed methods approach. In the last major chapter R. evaluates this approach and in particular questions whether the methodological effort for locating ultimately ‘only’ 24 quotes is justified. In this chapter she argues that, due to the different character of the new finds, it is possible to get a picture of Jerome's working method of citation. In this context it is particularly interesting that she assumes a systematic approach to reception on behalf of Jerome, which differs from that of the modern recipient. This statement is based on statistical numerical and thematic evaluations of the Aeneid citations. This exciting observation needs to be investigated on the basis of further classical pagan source texts.
R. has the merit of being the first to convincingly introduce a computer-assisted approach to research on Jerome's corpus and to make it applicable to other literary studies. With her work she not only provides researchers with a methodologically transparent monograph, but also with a processable XML version of Jerome's letters as well as tabular appendices. The latter also contain a list of the discarded finds, which not only shows the transparency of the work, but also allows conclusions to be drawn about Jerome's working methods. They are included by R. in her reflections on the citation method and on cultural transformation processes.
