Saint Jerome (345-420)

The name and the man

The saint's name was Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus — Hieronymus, "holy name" in Greek, rendered Jerome in English. He was born into a well-to-do Christian family at Stridon, a small town on the borders of Dalmatia and Pannonia (a Balkan region, today on the frontier between Croatia and Slovenia), which the Gothic invasions would destroy in his lifetime.^[7] The exact date of his birth remains debated: the old tradition placed it around 331, but modern scholarship puts it rather c. 345–347, hence the title chosen for this article.^[8]

The sources for his biography

Jerome is one of the best-documented Fathers, largely through his own pen. His correspondence — more than 150 letters preserved — is a biographical treasure of the first order, provided one allows for his tendency to stage-manage his own image.^[9] He even included himself in his De viris illustribus ("On Illustrious Men", c. 393), a catalogue of Christian writers which he closes with his own notice.^[10] To these direct sources must be added the testimonies of his contemporaries, friends such as Saint Augustine and adversaries such as Rufinus of Aquileia.

Studies at Rome under Donatus

Around the age of twelve, Jerome was sent to Rome to complete his education. There he studied under the celebrated grammarian Aelius Donatus — the commentator on Virgil and Terence, whose manuals would train the schoolboys of the Middle Ages — and developed a passion for Latin letters: Cicero, Virgil, Sallust, Terence.^[11] He was already building a personal library, copied in his own hand, which he would cherish all his life. It was also at Rome that he received baptism, probably around 366, from Pope Liberius or shortly after.^[12]

"When I was a young man, burning with a wonderful desire to learn, I did not teach myself, presuming on my own strength." — Saint Jerome, Letter 125, to Rusticus^[13]

Trier, Aquileia and the first companions

After Rome, Jerome travelled. At Trier, the imperial capital of Gaul, he discovered the nascent monastic life and copied works of theology: it was there, seemingly, that his decision to consecrate himself to God matured.^[14] Back at Aquileia, in northern Italy, he joined a circle of ascetic friends, among them Rufinus of Aquileia, who would later become his most painful adversary. An obscure quarrel scattered this first group, and Jerome left for the East.

The dream: "Thou art a Ciceronian, not a Christian"

Around 374, seriously ill at Antioch, Jerome had a dream that would mark his whole spiritual life. He saw himself dragged before the tribunal of the heavenly Judge. Ordered to say who he was, he answered: "I am a Christian." But the Judge replied: "Thou liest. Thou art a Ciceronian, not a Christian; for where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also."^[15] He tells the story in his famous Letter 22 to Eustochium:

"Asked about my state, I answered that I was a Christian. But He who sat in judgment said: 'Thou liest. Thou art a Ciceronian, not a Christian; for where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.'" — Saint Jerome, Letter 22 to Eustochium^[16]

Under the blows of a chastisement he believed real, Jerome swore never again to read profane books. The account, sometimes read as a literary device, nonetheless marks a genuine turning point: his references to the classical authors grow markedly rarer after this letter.^[17]

The hermit of the desert of Chalcis

From 374 to about 379, Jerome withdrew into the desert of Chalcis, south-west of Antioch, to live the life of the anchorites: fasts, tears, battles against temptation. This is the image art would retain above all — the emaciated penitent, beating his breast with a stone before a crucifix.^[18] He would later describe this combat with striking bluntness:

"How often, settled in the desert, in that vast solitude scorched by the blazing sun, did I fancy myself amid the pleasures of Rome! [...] My face was pale with fasting, and my mind, in an icy body, burned with desire." — Saint Jerome, Letter 22 to Eustochium^[19]

Learning Hebrew

It was in the desert that Jerome took a decision decisive for the history of the Bible: he set himself to Hebrew, a language then almost unknown to Latin Christians, under the guidance of a converted Jew. The effort was harsh — he admits struggling with the roughness of those "hissings and gasping words" — but he emerged able, uniquely among the Latin Fathers, to read the Old Testament in its original language.^[20] Ordained priest at Antioch around 379 (on condition of remaining free of any pastoral charge), he perfected his learning at Constantinople under Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, whose teaching he followed.^[21]

The pope's secretary

In 382, Jerome accompanied Bishop Paulinus of Antioch to Rome for a council. Pope Saint Damasus I, himself a man of letters and a friend of learning, kept him as secretary and adviser.^[22] For three years Jerome drafted answers to consultations, advised the pope on questions of Scripture, and acquired immense prestige in Rome's high Christian society.

The commission to revise the Bible

It was Damasus who entrusted to Jerome the task from which the Vulgate would be born: to revise the old Latin translations of the Gospels against the Greek text, so as to end the chaos of divergent manuscripts. Jerome explains this in his prefatory letter to Damasus:

"You compel me to make a new work out of an old one [...]. For is there any man, learned or unlearned, who, taking this volume in hand, will not at once cry out that I am a forger and a profane person, for daring to add, change or correct anything in the ancient books?" — Saint Jerome, preface to the revision of the Gospels, to Damasus^[23]

The circle of Roman noblewomen

At Rome, Jerome became the spiritual director of a circle of patrician ladies gathered on the Aventine around the widow Marcella: cultivated women, drawn to asceticism and the study of Scripture. Among them, two names would remain inseparable from his: the wealthy widow Paula and her daughter Eustochium, to whom Jerome addressed some of his finest letters on consecrated virginity.^[24] He taught them Hebrew, commented the psalms for them, and formed them in a life of prayer and renunciation.

Leaving Rome

Jerome's roughness, his biting satires against worldly clergy and false devotions, earned him solid enmities. At the death of Damasus, in December 384, his protector gone, he became the target of a hostile campaign and had to leave Rome in August 385.^[25] He departed for the East, soon followed by Paula and Eustochium.

Settling in the Holy Land

After a pilgrimage to the Holy Places and a visit to the monks of Egypt, Jerome and his companions settled in 386 at Bethlehem, near the grotto of the Nativity. Paula founded and financed several monasteries there: one for men, directed by Jerome, three for women, as well as a hospice for pilgrims.^[26] Jerome would spend the last thirty-four years of his life there, in a cell carved, tradition says, close to the very grotto of the Nativity.

The Vulgate: the Latin Bible of the West

At Bethlehem, Jerome undertook the work of his life. Far from merely revising the existing Latin versions (the Vetus Latina), he decided to retranslate the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew, no longer from the Greek of the Septuagint — a bold choice, almost scandalous to contemporaries accustomed to holding the Septuagint as inspired.^[27]

The "Hebrew truth"

Jerome's principle is the Hebraica veritas: to reach the authentic meaning of the Old Testament, one must go back to the original Hebrew text. Between 390 and 405, he thus translated almost all the books of the Old Testament, while revising the Gospels and the Psalms.^[28] His method blends fidelity to the meaning with care for the Latin tongue:

"I translate not word for word, but sense for sense — except in the Holy Scriptures, where even the order of the words is a mystery." — Saint Jerome, Letter 57 to Pammachius, "On the best manner of translating"^[29]

Reception and the Council of Trent

First contested, Jerome's translation gradually imposed itself, until it became the common version — the vulgata editio, whence its name of Vulgate. More than eleven centuries later, the Council of Trent, in its session of 8 April 1546, declared it "authentic" for the public use of the Church: not superior to the original, but reliable and free from error in matters of faith and morals.^[30] This is the text that would nourish all the liturgy, scholastic theology and art of the West.

Jerome is not only a translator: he is a formidable controversialist, who placed his pen at the service of the Catholic faith with a vigor sometimes excessive, but always in the service of important truths.

Against Helvidius: the perpetual virginity of Mary

Even at Rome, Jerome refuted Helvidius, who denied the perpetual virginity of the Virgin by reading the "brethren of Jesus" as sons of Mary. Jerome showed that the biblical word "brother" also denotes close relatives, and defended virginity ante partum, in partu et post partum.^[31] His treatise fixed Catholic doctrine on this point for a long time to come.

Against Jovinian and Vigilantius

Against Jovinian, who placed marriage and virginity on the same level and denied the value of fasting, Jerome exalted (sometimes to excess) the superiority of consecrated virginity.^[32] Against Vigilantius, he defended the veneration of relics and martyrs, vigils in sanctuaries and the prayer of the saints — practices which that Gallic priest held up to ridicule.^[33]

The Origenist quarrel with Rufinus

The most painful of his controversies set him against his former friend Rufinus of Aquileia, over the doctrines of Origen. Jerome, who had first admired the great Alexandrian exegete, resolutely sided against the Origenist errors (the pre-existence of souls, universal final salvation). The break with Rufinus was brutal and public, and the friendship never recovered.^[34] It illustrates the shadow side of Jerome's character — but also his refusal of any compromise on doctrine.

Against the Pelagians

Towards the end of his life, Jerome stood beside Saint Augustine in the fight against Pelagianism, the heresy which minimized the necessity of grace. His Dialogue against the Pelagians (415) earned him the hatred of their partisans: exalted monks went so far as to burn his monasteries at Bethlehem.^[35]

A passionate love of Scripture

Jerome's whole interior life is summed up in a single sentence, which became one of the most famous maxims of the Catholic tradition, taken from the prologue of his Commentary on Isaiah:

"Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ." — Saint Jerome, prologue of the Commentary on Isaiah^[36]

For Jerome, Scripture is not an object of erudition: it is the place of a living encounter with the Word of God. He urges Eustochium, Paula and all his correspondents to read and meditate on the Bible without ceasing:

"Read the divine Scriptures often; indeed, never let the holy book leave your hands." — Saint Jerome, Letter 52 to Nepotian^[37]

Asceticism and penance

The other side of his spirituality is asceticism: fasting, vigils, bodily penance, contempt for the world. Jerome never ceased to preach penance as a path of purification, and his own monastic life bears witness to it. The iconography of the penitent with skull and stone expresses this dimension: remembering death, striking one's breast, preferring Christ to all human glory.^[38]

Spiritual direction

Lastly, Jerome is a great director of souls, particularly attentive to the holiness of consecrated women. His letters to Paula, Eustochium, Marcella, Laeta (on the Christian education of a little girl) and Furia remain classics of spirituality. In them he unfolds an ideal of virginity, study and prayer which anticipates the great monastic tradition of the West.^[39]

Death at Bethlehem (420)

Tried by the death of Paula (404) and then of Eustochium (419), weakened by age, illness and the sack of Rome by the Goths (410) which shook him deeply, Jerome died at Bethlehem on 30 September 420, near the grotto of the Nativity where he had worked so much.^[40] He was buried on the spot.

The relics at Santa Maria Maggiore

His remains were later transferred to Rome. Tradition venerates them today in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, near the relic of the Holy Crib (Sacra Culla).^[41]

A cult as old as the Church herself

As with most saints of antiquity, Jerome knew no formal canonization process: the procedure did not yet exist. It was the uninterrupted veneration of the Christian people, confirmed by the liturgy, that recognized his holiness in the centuries following his death. His name stands in the Roman Martyrology on 30 September, and his feast is celebrated throughout the Latin Church.^[42]

One of the four Latin Doctors

Jerome was very early ranked among the great masters of the faith. In 1298, Pope Boniface VIII, by the decree Gloriosus (Liber Sextus, III, 22), ordered that the feasts of the four great masters — Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great — be celebrated as doubles throughout the Church: these are the four great Doctors of the Latin Church, often depicted together.^[43]

The lion, the cardinal's hat and the skull

Jerome's iconography is one of the richest in Western art. Three attributes recur constantly:

• The lion: according to a legend borrowed from the life of Saint Gerasimus, Jerome is said to have drawn a thorn from the paw of a lion that came to his monastery; the tamed animal is said to have remained his faithful companion. A pious tradition, but a magnificent image of holiness taming creation.^[44]
• The cardinal's hat (and the red robe): a famous anachronism. The College of Cardinals did not exist in the fourth century; but because Jerome had served Pope Damasus, medieval art lent him the cardinal's dignity.^[45]
• The skull, the crucifix and the stone: attributes of the penitent of the desert, meditating on death and beating his breast.

Patron of translators and biblical scholars

Because he gave the West its Latin Bible, Jerome became the patron of translators, biblical scholars, librarians and archaeologists. His feast, 30 September, is today celebrated as World Translation Day.^[46]

Spiritus Paraclitus (Benedict XV)

On 15 September 1920, for the fifteenth centenary of Jerome's death, Pope Benedict XV published the encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus, devoted entirely to the saint, whom he proposes as a model of love and study of Scripture, and as a bulwark against the excesses of rationalist biblical criticism.^[47]

Scripturae Sacrae affectus (Francis, 2020)

On 30 September 2020, for the sixteenth centenary of his death, Pope Francis devoted to him the apostolic letter Scripturae Sacrae affectus ("Devotion to Sacred Scripture"). In it he presents Jerome as a "living library of Christ" and repeats the relevance of his cry: without Scripture, we do not know Christ.^[48] The same attention to the Word of God inspires the Sunday of the Word of God, instituted on the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.

"Love Holy Scripture, and wisdom will love you; love it tenderly, and it will keep you; honor it, and you will receive its embraces." — Saint Jerome, Letter 130 to Demetrias^[49]

• The Doctors of the Church in history — the complete list and the meaning of the title, of which Jerome is one of the first four in the West.
• Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) — his great correspondent and ally against Pelagianism, the other giant of the Latin West.
• Saint Ambrose of Milan (339–397) — the bishop-pastor, third of the four Latin Doctors.
• Saint Hilary of Poitiers (315–367) — another Latin Father and Doctor, defender of the Nicene faith in the West.
• Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (296–373) — the Greek Father whose doctrinal combat Jerome continues.
• The Basilica of the Nativity at Bethlehem — the place near which Jerome lived, prayed and translated the Bible for thirty-four years.