ABSTRACT
This paper develops a Hieronymian area of a broader project about marriage, inheritance, virginity, and the Church. It aims to test 'on the ground' Jack Goody's controversial thesis about the Church's alleged financial manoeuvres to deprive people of heirs and divert funds into its own coffers. Goody" work has often been dismissed on the grounds that there was no 'Church' in the 4th C. to have such an agenda. Refusing to be deterred, I have been working on churchmen who were perceived as pursuing such goals: Jerome being, naturally, a prime exhibit. There is considerable evidence in his letters and also in contemporary laws: one must examine his advocacy of virginity, the practice of subintroductio, and his own activities that border on captatio. One key ecclesiastical means of exercising control over wills and finances lay in doctrines about penitence, and alms.
