Life of St.

Jerome
Saint Jerome was a Latin Christian priest, confessor,
theologian and historian, who also became a Doctor of the
Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon,
on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. He is best known
for his translation of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate),
and his commentaries on the Gospel of the Hebrews. His
list of writings is extensive. He is recognised as a saint by
the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church,
the Lutheran Church, and the Church of England (Anglican
Communion). Jerome is commemorated on 30 September
with a memorial.
Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus was born
at Stridon around 347. He was not baptized until about
360 - 366, when he had gone to Rome with his
friend Bonosus (who may or may not have been the same
Bonosus whom Jerome identifies as his friend who went to
live as a hermit on an island in the Adriatic) to
pursue rhetorical and philosophical studies. He studied
under the grammarian Aelius Donatus. There Jerome
learned Latin and at least some Greek, though probably
not the familiarity with Greek literature he would later
claim to have acquired as a schoolboy.
In Rome he was surrounded by a circle of well-born and
well-educated women, including some from the
noblest patrician families, such as the
widows Lea, Marcella and Paula, with their
daughters Blaesilla and Eustochium. The resulting
inclination of these women to the monastic life and from
the indulgent lasciviousness in Rome, and his unsparing
criticism of the secular clergy of Rome, brought a growing
hostility against him among the Roman clergy and their
supporters. Soon after the death of his patron
Damasus (10 December 384), Jerome was forced by them
to leave his position at Rome after an inquiry was brought
up by the Roman clergy into allegations that he had an
improper relationship with the widow Paula.
Additionally, his condemnation of Blaesilla's hedonistic
lifestyle in Rome had led her to adopt ascetic practices,
but it affected her health and worsened her physical
weakness to the point that she died just four months after
starting to follow his instructions; much of the Roman
populace were outraged at Jerome for causing the
premature death of such a lively young woman, and his

insistence to Paula that Blaesilla should not be mourned,

and complaints that her grief was excessive, were seen as
heartless, polarising Roman opinion against him.
In August 385, he left Rome for good and returned to
Antioch, accompanied by his brother Paulinianus and
several friends, and followed a little later by Paula and
Eustochium, who had resolved to end their days in
the Holy Land. In the winter of 385, Jerome acted as their
spiritual adviser. 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.

Jerome was a scholar at a time when that statement

implied a fluency in Greek. He knew some Hebrew when
he started his translation project, but moved
to Jerusalem to strengthen his grip on Jewish scripture
commentary. A wealthy Roman aristocrat, Paula, funded
his stay in a monastery in Bethlehem and he completed
his translation there. He began in 382 by correcting the
existing Latin language version of the New Testament,
commonly referred to as the Vetus Latina. By 390 he
turned to translating the Hebrew Bible from the original
Hebrew, having previously translated portions from
the Septuagint which came from Alexandria. He believed
that the Council of Jamnia, or mainstream
rabbinical Judaism, had rejected the Septuagint as valid
Jewish scriptural texts because of what were ascertained
as mistranslations along with its
Hellenistic heretical elements. He completed this work by
405. Prior to Jerome's Vulgate, all Latin translations of
the Old Testament were based on the Septuagint not the
Hebrew. Jerome's decision to use a Hebrew text instead of
the previous translated Septuagint went against the
advice of most other Christians, including Augustine, who
thought the Septuagint inspired. Modern scholarship,
however, has cast doubts on the actual quality of Jerome's
Hebrew knowledge. Many modern scholars believe that
the Greek Hexapla is the main source for Jerome's "iuxta
Hebraeos" translation of the Old Testament.

Jerome's commentaries fall into three groups:

His translations or recastings of Greek predecessors,

including fourteen homilies on the Book of Jeremiah and
the same number on the Book of Ezekiel by Origen
(translated ca. 380 in Constantinople); two homilies
of Origen of Alexandria on the Song of Solomon (in
Rome, ca. 383); and thirty-nine on the Gospel of
Luke (ca. 389, in Bethlehem). The nine homilies of
Origen on the Book of Isaiah included among his works
were not done by him. Here should be mentioned, as an
important contribution to the topography of Israel, his
book De situ et nominibus locorum Hebraeorum, a
translation with additions and some regrettable
omissions of the Onomasticon of Eusebius. To the same
period (ca. 390) belongs the Liber interpretationis
nominum Hebraicorum, based on a work supposed to go
back to Philo and expanded by Origen.

Original commentaries on the Old Testament. To the

period before his settlement at Bethlehem and the
following five years belong a series of short Old
Testament studies: De seraphim, De voce Osanna, De
tribus quaestionibus veteris legis (usually included
among the letters as 18, 20, and 36); Quaestiones
hebraicae in Genesim; Commentarius in
Ecclesiasten; Tractatus septem in Psalmos 1016 (lost); Explanationes in
Michaeam, Sophoniam, Nahum, Habacuc, Aggaeum. Aft
er 395 he composed a series of longer commentaries,
though in rather a desultory fashion: first on Jonah and
Obadiah (396), then on Isaiah (ca. 395-ca. 400), on
Zechariah, Malachi, Hoseah, Joel, Amos (from 406), on
the Book of Daniel (ca. 407), on Ezekiel (between 410
and 415), and on Jeremiah (after 415, left unfinished).

New Testament commentaries. These include

only Philemon, Galatians, Ephesians, and Titus (hastily
composed 387-388); Matthew (dictated in a fortnight,
398); Mark, selected passages in Luke, Revelation, and
the prologue to the Gospel of John.

Jerome's letters or epistles, both by the great variety

of their subjects and by their qualities of style, form an
important portion of his literary remains. Whether he is

discussing problems of scholarship, or reasoning on cases

of conscience, comforting the afflicted, or saying pleasant
things to his friends, scourging the vices and corruptions
of the time and against sexual immorality among the
clergy, [19] exhorting to the ascetic life and renunciation of
the world, or breaking a lance with his theological
opponents, he gives a vivid picture not only of his own
mind, but of the age and its peculiar characteristics.
Because there was no distinct line between personal
documents and those meant for publication, we frequently
find in his letters both confidential messages and
treatises meant for others besides the one to whom he
was writing.[20]
The letters most frequently reprinted or referred to are of
a hortatory nature, such as Ep. 14, Ad Heliodorum de
laude vitae solitariae; Ep. 22, Ad Eustochium de custodia
virginitatis; Ep. 52, Ad Nepotianum de vita clericorum et
monachorum, a sort of epitome of pastoral theology from
the ascetic standpoint; Ep. 53, Ad Paulinum de studio
scripturarum; Ep. 57, to the same, De institutione
monachi; Ep. 70, Ad Magnum de scriptoribus
ecclesiasticis; and Ep. 107, Ad Laetam de institutione
filiae.

Jerome is the second most voluminous writer (after St.

Augustine) in ancient Latin Christianity. In the Roman
Catholic Church, he is recognized as the patron
saint of translators, librarians and encyclopedists. He
acquired a knowledge of Hebrew by studying with
a Jew who converted to Christianity, and took the unusual
position (for that time) that the Hebrew, and not the
Septuagint, was the inspired text of the Old Testament.
The traditional view is that he used this knowledge to
translate what became known as the Vulgate, and his
translation was slowly but eventually accepted in the
Catholic Church. The later resurgence of Hebrew studies
within Christianity owes much to him.
He showed more zeal and interest in the ascetic ideal than
in abstract speculation. It was this strict asceticism that
made Martin Luther judge him so severely. In
fact, Protestant readers are not generally inclined to
accept his writings as authoritative. The tendency to
recognize a superior comes out in his correspondence
with Augustine (cf. Jerome's letters numbered 56, 67, 102-

105, 110-112, 115-116; and 28, 39, 40, 67-68, 71-75, 81-82
in Augustine's).
Despite the criticisms already mentioned, Jerome has
retained a rank among the western Fathers. This would be
his due, if for nothing else, on account of the great
influence exercised by his Latin version of the Bible upon
the
subsequent ecclesiastical and theological development.

RELIGION
IV
St. Jerome

Submitted to:
Mr. Alberto Baez

Submitted by:
Claire F. Duhaylungsod