St. Jerome

• St. Jerome was born in the remote town of Stridon somewhere on the border of Dalmatia, near the Adriatic Sea.
• He was a Scripture scholar, translator, polemicist, and ascetic.
• His younger brother, Paulinian, together with a younger sister, would follow his example in taking up the ascetic

life.

• From ca. 360 to 366, he studied at Rome, where one of his teachers was Aelius Donatus, a renowned grammarian and commentator on Terence and Virgil.
• It was at Rome, in 366, that he received baptism.
• After a stay in Trier, he spent some time in Aquileia; there, with several friends, among them Rufinus of Aquileia, he devoted himself to asceticism.
• Setting out for the East ca. 372, he stayed first at Antioch, where he continued his study of Hebrew and Greek.
• He lived for several years (ca. 375-377) as a hermit in the desert region of Chaleis in Syria where he began his study of Hebrew and thus laid the foundations of his mature studies in the Old and New Testaments.
• Again at Antioch, he was ordained a priest by Paulinus. While in the city, he attended the lectures of Apollinaris of Laodicea.
• He accompanied his bishop to the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (381), where he made the acquaintance of Sts. Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa from whom he learnt to form the design of translating Origen’s commentaries into Latin.
• He went on to Rome with Paulinus to gain the support of Damasus I in the controversy with Melitius.
• While in Rome (382-385), he served as Damasus’ secretary and became the spiritual counselor of a group of noble Roman women among them Paula and her daughter Eustochium (who was the aunt of Paula the Younger).
• The true work of his life began in 383, when Damasus entrusted him with the task of revising the Old Latin version of the Gospels, a process which was afterwards extended, though with less thoroughness, to the rest of the New Testament.
• After Damasus’ death and the election of Siticius to the

see in 384, he departed, under some compulsion for the East. He had made enemies by his rigorous ascetical teachings and stringent censures of Roman laxity and did not enjoy Siticius’ support.

• After a period of travel about the East, he founded, along with Paula, a double monastery of men and women at Bethlehem in 386. There, he would devote his life to his scriptural studies and voluminous writings.
• He was at first favorable to the works of Origen and enjoyed cordial relations with his old friends Rufinus and Melania the Younger, who themselves had founded a double monastery in Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives. The subsequent bitter dispute between St. Jerome and Rufinus would continue, despite a brief period of reconciliation (397), until Rufinus’ death.
• When St. Jerome’s monastery was attacked by a maraud gang in 416, the Roman bishop Innocent I criticized John of Jerusalem for his failure to prevent the assault. St. Jerome died a few years thereafter.
• Although showing considerable dependence on earlier exegetes, the commentaries manifest St. Jerome’s own considerable erudition.
• At the suggestion of Damasus, He began his work upon the Latin version of the Old Testament (the Vulgate). His first experiment was a slight revision of the Old Latin Psalter, in which he used the help of the Septuagint.
• At Bethlehem this task was resumed, and a more careful revision made by comparing the Latin version with the Hebrew, and other Old Testament books were similarly treated. - Lastly, in 391, St. Jerome set himself to translating the whole of the Old Testament from the original.
• The work was not finished before 404, more than twenty years after his first experiment was made upon the Old

Latin version of the Gospels.

1. Biblical Translations

• The Gospels and the New Testament.
• The First Revision of the Psalter.
• The Gallican Psalter and Revision from the Hexapla.
• The Deuterocanonical Books. 2. Translations and Reference Works
• The Chronicle of Eusebius.

• The Onomastica: From Eusebius’ work containing a list of names of persons and places with their etymological interpretation, Jerome drew a Liber locorum and a Liber nominum.
• De viris illustribis: A guide to Christian literature based on Eusebius’Ecclesiastical History. 3. Biblical Commentaries
• On Paul’s Epistles (Galatians, Ephesians, Philemon, Titus); On Ecclesiastes; On the Psalms; On the Prophets; On Matthew.
• Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim: A technical work on Genesis.
• On the Book of Revelation: A revision of Victorinus of Pettau’s Latin treatise. 4. Translations of Origen and Didymus the Blind
• St. Jerome translated several of Origen’s collections of numerous homilies , and 39 homilies on the Gospel of St. Luke.
• De principiis: In the course of the controversy with Rufinus, St. Jerome issued (399) his own translation of Origen’s On the Principles to counter that of his former friend (Rufinus).
• His translation of the work of Didymus the Blind On the Holy Spirit (387-390), the only extant version, was directed against a treatise of St. Ambrose. 5. Translations of Polemical Works
• Scattered throughout St. Jerome’s correspondence are translations of writings of St. Epiphanius of Salamis and St. Theophilus of Alexandria among others. 6. Monastic Works
• The Life of St. Paul of Thebes.
• The Life of Hilarion of Gaza, the spiritual father of St. Epiphanius of Salamis.
• The Life of Malchus whom St. Jerome had met during his

stay in the desert of Chalcis.

• The Pachomiana: A Latin version of the Rule of Pachomius, made from a Greek rendering of the Coptic original. It preserved that work and allowed for its influence on western monasticism. 7. Homilies
• A series of homilies given in Bethlehem ca. 400 are based mainly on the Psalms and Gospels, especially St. Mark; many are related to the cycle of the liturgical year. 8. Polemical Works
• Against adherents of Lucifer of Cagliari(ca. 379).
• Against Helvidius (ca. 383), who asserted that the Virgin Mary had other children after Jesus’ birth.
• Against Jovinian (393), who taught that the reward of heaven would be equal for all and that virginity was not superior to marriage.
• Against John of Jerusalem (397), a refutation of the teachings of Origen and defense of St. Epiphanius.
• Against Rufinus in three books composed (401-402) in the course of the Origenist controversy.
• Against Vigilantius (406), a defense of the veneration of martyrs, monasticism, and clerical celibacy.
• Against the adherents of Pelagius, a dialogue in three books (415).
• St. Jerome wrote in one of his letters: The Son of God was made Son of Man for our salvation. Nine months He waited for His birth in the womb…He who encloses the world in His fist was contained in the narrow walls of a manger. And I am not even talking about the thirty years when He lived in obscurity, satisfied with His parents’ poverty. When He was whipped, He remained calm. When He was crucified, He prayed for His crucifiers. “What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits

towards me? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints…Because we are redeemed by the blood of Christ, we should gladly desire to lay down our lives for our Redeemer.