Educație și pedagogie în epistolele Fericitului Ieronim
Education and Pedagogy in the Letters of Saint Jerome

Summary/Abstract: The goal of our study is to present and analyse the programme of Christian education conceived by Saint Jerome for two of his disciples, Paula and Pacatula. More precisely, our approach aims to highlight the content of intellectual education, its factors, as well as the pedagogical methods employed by Saint Jerome to teach his two disciples. The education used by Jerome for little Paula is of a dominant ascetic type. He is talking to a future nun. In essence, the education of Paula and Pacatula is based on the study of the Holy Scripture and of the works of some of the Church Fathers. The study of the Scripture must be associated with that of the Book of Psalms, personal reading (lectio) and prayer (oratio). Jerome leaves literature and the profane arts out of little Paula’s education. The programme of elementary teaching conceived by Jerome for his disciple Paula is generally in agreement with the principles of the Greek and especially Roman pedagogy. Paula’s education must go from the basics to what is more complex, from the element to the composite. It is imperative that Paula learn to read first the letters, then the syllables, isolated words, sentences; only then can she move to continuous texts. Jerome uses a less brutal pedagogy, associating the learning of the letters with a simple game; the programme of study must be adapted, from the point of view of quantity and content, to Paula’s very young age so that she might not grow to hate learning.

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