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Jerome never wrote neither ecclesiastical history nor a monastic history, nonetheless he cultivated the ambition to be a Church and monasticism historian competing with both Eusebius of Caesarea and Athanasius of Alexandria. The paper focuses on the several stages of this relationship, going through the Vita Pauli;Vita Hilarionis; De viris illustribus, Praecepta Pachomiana and the Epistula 127. Jerome's main concern is to establish who was the first and this aim makes him draw 'authentic' genealogies of the monasticism, challenging other historical reconstructions. His work is mainly targeted to ascetics and his origins' reconstruction and it is important since it reports of the rising of a monastic self-awareness in the first generation of western ascetics. Their experiences were linked to the Egyptian tradition, as it was the generating, most ancient and prestigious one; on the other side, they believed monasticism being related to the apostolic Church and considered themselves as contemporary 'apostolic men'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]