The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late AntiquityIn the centuries following his death, Jerome (c. 347 420) was venerated as a saint and as one of the four Doctors of the Latin church. In his own lifetime, however, he was a severely marginalized figure whose intellectual and spiritual authority did not go unchallenged, at times not even by those in his inner circle. His ascetic theology was rejected by the vast majority of Christian contemporaries, his Hebrew scholarship was called into question by