Saint Jerome

Doctor of the Church (345-420)

Feast – September 30

Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, today known as Saint Jerome, was born at Stridon, a town in the Roman province of Dalmatia around 345 A.D. He was of Illyrian ancestry and his native tongue was the Illyrian dialect. His parents were probably well-to-do and Christian. The young Jerome was educated by Aelius Donatus, who was a famous Roman grammarian. From him Jerome learned Latin and Greek. Despite parents’ efforts to raise Jerome properly, the young man led a wild and misspent youth. His thirst for knowledge was excessive, and due to his love of books, a passion shares with his friend Bonosus, Jerome went to pursue rhetorical and philosophical study in Rome to become a lawyer. He had studied under the best masters, visited foreign cities, and devoted himself to the pursuit of learning. While he was not studying, Jerome pursued pleasure. To alleviate the feelings of guilt he often felt afterwards, he would visit the crypts in Rome and imagine himself in hell. He did so every Sunday, even though he was not a Christian.

“Often I would find myself entering those crypts, deep dug in the earth, with their walls on either side lined with the bodies of the dead, where everything was so dark that almost it seemed as though the Psalmist’s words were fulfilled, Let them go down quick into Hell. Here and there the light, not entering in through windows, but filtering down from above through shafts, relieved the horror of the darkness. But again, as soon as you found yourself cautiously moving forward, the black night closed around and there came to my mind the line of Vergil, “Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent”. (Jerome, Commentarius in Ezzechielem)

Fortunately, Jerome had as a companion Bonosus, who was a Christian influence. He converted and joined the Church and was baptized around the year 366 by Pope Liberius, but it was only when one night, St. Jerome dreamed that he stood before the judgment seat of God. “Who are you?” the Lord asked. “I am a Christian,” Jerome responded. “No, you are no Christian. You are a Ciceronian. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” came the reply. Convicted, St. Jerome stepped away from the worldly things that had consumed him and began in earnest the pursuit of holiness making a vow never again to read profane works, and another of celibacy. In Rome he had assisted a number of holy women to organize houses of retirement where they consecrated themselves to God by vow. Calumnies, arising from jealousy, made a certain headway against the scholar whose competence was beginning to attract honors.

Interested in theological matters, St. Jerome set aside secular matters to pursue matters of the faith. In 370, he travelled close to home, ending up in a monastery at Aquileia. The monastery was overseen by Bishop St. Valerian, who had attracted some of the greatest minds in Christendom. While in Aquileia, St. Jerome met Tyrannius Rufinus and the two men became friends. Rufinus was a monk who became renowned for his translations of Greek works into Latin. St. Jerome himself was a translator, a skill he developed during his time in the Roman catacombs, translating the inscriptions on the tombs.

Following his time in Aquileia (Italy), St. Jerome traveled with his friend Bonosus to Treves, Gaul where he seems to have taken up theological studies, and where he copied, for his friend Rufinus, Hilary of Poitiers’ commentary on the Psalms and the treatise De synodis. He began to translate books for his own use. His goal was to build a personal library. After a time in Gaul, he returned to Aquileia in 373 where he stay of at least several months, or possibly years.

While there, St. Jerome and his friend Bonosus had a falling out and decided to part ways. Bonosus departed for an island in the Adriatic where he would live as a hermit for a time. In 374, St. Jerome finally reached Antioch, after making several lengthy stops along the way. While in that city, he began writing his first work, “Concerning the Seven Beatings.” Seized with a desire for a life of ascetic penance, he went for a time to the desert of Chalcis, to the southeast of Antioch, known as the “Syrian Thebaid”, from the number of hermits inhabiting it. There for four years St. Jerome learned in solitude, intense sufferings and persecution from the demons, new lessons in humility, penance and prayer, and divine wisdom. During this period, he seems to have found time for studying and writing. He made his first attempt to learn Hebrew under the guidance of a converted Jew; and he seems to have been in correspondence with Jewish Christians in Antioch. Around this time he had copied for him a Hebrew Gospel, of which fragments are preserved in his notes, and is known today as the Gospel of the Hebrews, and which the Nazarenes considered to be the true Gospel of Matthew. St. Jerome translated parts of this Hebrew Gospel into Greek.

After he emerged from his hermitage, returning to Antioch in 378 or 379, St. Jerome was quickly embroiled in conflicts within the Church at Antioch. This was not something he wanted to be associated with. He made clear that he did not want to become a priest, preferring instead to be a monk or a hermit. But Church officials in Antioch as well as Pope Damasus wanted him to be ordained. St. Jerome relented on the condition he would not be expected to serve in any ministry and would still be allowed to pursue his monastic life. He was subsequently ordained by Bishop Paulinus.

Making the most of his freedom as a priest, St. Jerome traveled to Constantinople where he studied under St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who was renown as a great theologian. After St. Gregory left Constantinople in 382, St. Jerome traveled to Rome for a council of the Church where he distinguished himself to the pope and took a prominent place in his councils. For the next three years (382–385) he was in Rome as secretary to Pope Damasus I. While serving as secretary to the pope, St. Jerome also promoted the ideal of aestheticism to everyone around him.

Pope Damasus assigned to him the task of revising the Latin Bible. St. Jerome obeyed his earthly Head as he had obeyed his Lord. In August 385, he left Rome for good and returned to Antioch, accompanied by his brother Paulinian and several friends, who had resolved to end their days in the Holy Land. The pilgrims, joined by Bishop Paulinus of Antioch, visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the holy places of Galilee, and then went to Egypt, the home of the great heroes of the ascetic life. Late in the summer of 388 St. Jerome was back in Palestine and spent the remainder of his life working in a cave near Bethlehem, the very cave Jesus was born, surrounded by a few friends, to whom he acted as priestly guide and teacher.

The eloquent hermit sent forth from his solitary cell a solidly accurate version of the Scriptures which became the Latin Vulgate Bible. St. Jerome was a hard worker and he wrote extensively defending the virginity of Mary, which some clerics dared to question. He also engaged in several debates against various other heresies including a lengthy battle with his old friend Rufinus. He was above all a Scripture scholar, translating most of the Old Testament from the Hebrew. St. Jerome also wrote commentaries which are a great source of scriptural inspiration for us today. He was an avid student, a thorough scholar, a prodigious letter-writer and a consultant to monks, bishops, and pope. Saint Augustine said of him, “What Jerome is ignorant of, no mortal has ever known.”

As a modern scholar says, “No man before St. Jerome or among his contemporaries and very few men for many centuries afterwards were so well qualified to do the work.” The Council of Trent called for a new edition of the Vulgate and declared it the authentic text to be used in the Church.

For fourteen years the hand of the great scholar could no longer write; but Saint Jerome could still dictate to six secretaries at a time, to each on a different subject. He died in his beloved Bethlehem on September 30, 420. His tomb is still in a subterranean chapel of its ancient basilica, but his relics were transported to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where the crib of Bethlehem is conserved.

Saint Jerome is the patron saint of archaeologists, Biblical scholars, librarians, students and translators.

References and Excerpts

[1]          F. Media, “Saint Jerome,” Franciscan Media, 30-Sep-2016. .

[2]          C. Online, “St. Jerome – Saints & Angels,” Catholic Online. [Online]. Available: https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=10. [Accessed: 12-Sep-2018].

[3]          “Saint Jerome, Doctor of the Church.” [Online]. Available: http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_jerome.html. [Accessed: 12-Sep-2018].

[4]          “Saint Jerome,” CatholicSaints.Info, 26-Dec-2008. .

[5]          “What we probably don’t know about St. Jerome is just what we need to know,” Aleteia — Catholic Spirituality, Lifestyle, World News, and Culture, 28-Sep-2017. .

[6]          “Jerome,” Wikipedia. 04-Sep-2018.