Baring-Gould’s sources: All Latin Martyrologies. Anglican Reformed Kalendar. In the Modern Roman, also May 9, the Translation of S. Jerome from Jerusalem to Rome. By the Greeks and Russians on June 15. Authorities: — His own writings, and those of contemporaries, S. Augustine, S. Innocent I., Sulpicius Severus, S. Prosper, Rufinus, &c.] Hieronymus, or Jerome, as we call him in English, was bom at Stridon, on the confines of Dalmatia and Pannonia, a town destroyed by the Goths in the lifetime of the saint.1 The place was rebuilt, and Sdregna, in the heart of stony, barren Istria, on the road between Capo dTstria and Montena, claims to be the place. The name of Jerome’s father was Eusebius, and his tomb, or what pretends to be his tomb, is shown to this day at Sdregna. But unfortunately for the honour of Istria, S. Jerome plainly states that Stridon was on the borders of Dalmatia and Pannonia, so that we are forbidden to look for it in Istria. It has been thought to be a little place called Stridova, Strigova, or Strigna, between the Mar and Drave, near the point of contact of Croatia, Styria, and Hungary. It is a village consisting at present of some thirty cottages, with a chapel dedicated to S. Jerome, and the house in which he was bom is there pointed out, perched on a hill. A miraculous spring issues from the base of the hillock, called the fountain of S. Jerome. Over the door of the house is placed an inscription, “ Hie natus est S. Hieronymus, Eccleske doctor.”
S. Jerome [translator of the Bible into Latin (d. 420)] was born about the year 33 1.1 PI is parents were Catholics, of honourable family, and 1 Hieron. De viris illust. c. 135.
9 Prosper in Chron. “ Sub consulibus Basso et Albavio but in 420, lie says, S. Jerome died “Anno aetatis suae nonagesimo-primo,’' which would put his birth at S. Jerome.
wealthy. He had a brother named Paulinian, and a sister, whose name we do not know. Of his childhood not much is known. “Which of us does not remember his infancy?” he writes. “I certainly do, enough to make a grave man like you laugh.... I remember how I used to run in and out of the servants’ chambers, when a little fellow, spending my days in games, till I was dragged away captive from my aunt’s lap to that grim Orbilius.” 1 This old aunt was Castorina, to whom one of his epistles was addressed in after years, which still exists. Orbilius was not the name of his master; he calls his tutor thus after the celebrated Beneventine grammarian, whom Horace calls “ Plagosus.”
The young Jerome was instructed in elocution and law, to prepare him for the legal profession. “ Now that I am an old white-haired man,” he writes, “with bald pate, I often dream that I am declaiming in my new toga some petty cause before the rhetorician; and when I wake up, I congratulate myself that I am free from the agonies of speechmaking.”2 He continued his studies at Rome, under a certain Donatus. There he attended the courts, to study oratory, and, he says, it amused him much to observe how the lawyers on either side, becoming heated with their arguments, lost temper, and took to abusing each other roundly.3 It was perhaps there that he caught the trick of so dealing with his opponents in theological controversies, which disfigures his writings. At the same time he was wont to visit the catacombs, and prowl along the dark avenues, studying the walls honeycombed with cells in which lay the bodies of martyrs and confessors.* 1 Contra Rufin. lib. i. So. * // id. 8 Ii> Epi^t. ad Galat. lib. i. c. a. 4 In Ezech. lib. xii. c. 40.
fSept. 30. Besides having Donatus as his master in grammar, Jerome took lessons in oratory from the rhetorician C. Marius Victorinus, a Christian, who wrote a commentary on the Epistles of S. Paul, and who, for his merits, was given a statue in the forum of Trajan [Roman emperor 98–117].
Jerome had not left Rome in 363, when Julian the Apostate [Roman emperor 361–363 who tried to restore paganism] was killed. He was not idle during his stay there, for, in addition to studying oratory and grammar, he busily collected a library. His moral conduct does not, however, seem to have been exemplary. He repeatedly laments the fact that in his youth he fell into sins of the flesh. At that time he was not baptized. He had lost, he says in one place, the innocence given to him at his nativity; a new innocence had been given him at his second birth, which he had hoped not to be despoiled of. Yet even his baptismal garment he had stained, and in one of his letters to Damasus the Pope, he sadly says that having been baptized by the Spirit, and having defiled his robe of innocence, he must look forward to the baptism of fire, in which its stains might be burnt out.1 From Rome S. Jerome went to Treves [Trier in Germany] and to the Rhine, dropping down the Moselle. At Treves he copied out two books of S. Hilary, and this seems to have marked the turn of his mind to sacred studies. There also he made acquaintance with Rufinus, a friendship which was not, however, destined to last through life. There also he saw some Atticoti, or Scots, “ a British nation who eat human flesh.”
From Treves he returned south, and remained some time at Aquileia with his friend Rufinus, from about 370 to 372. There he contracted friendship with Chromatius, afterwards Bishop of Aquileia, the archdeacon Jovinus, the 1 “ Habeo omnia immunda: et quia semel spiritu baptizatus, rursum tunicam pollui, secundi baptisinatis purgatione, id est, isnis indigeo.” iip. 18. S. Jerome.
deacon Eusebius [Eusebius of Caesarea (d. c. 339), the first historian of the Church], and Innocent. It was in company with Innocent that Jerome left Aquileia for the East in 372. They reached Antioch together, and there Innocent died, and Jerome was cast on the bed of sickness. In 373, at Antioch, Jerome made the acquaintance of Evagrius the ecclesiastical historian. He had sent a letter, at the request of Innocent, to Evagrius some time before, on the case of an unfortunate woman who had been tortured by order of the consul at Aquileia,1 on false accusation. One executioner detailed to cut off her head had struck at her four times; another executioner three times, and had left her for dead, but marvellous to relate, the poor creature had revived. In his letter he had poured out his indignation and abhorrence of the consul, and this had probably obliged him to leave Aquileia.
Whilst Jerome lay sick at Antioch, his friend Heliodorus came to see him from Jerusalem, and informed him that Rufinus was then in Egypt.* Heliodorus was bent on retiring into the desert, and embracing an eremitical life, and on taking Jerome with him; but to this Jerome would not consent. He perhaps felt himself too ill to endure the austerities of a hermit’s life.3 In 374 he was still at Antioch, and suffering from bad health, and an attack of fever, which reduced him to a condition of great emaciation and exhaustion.
The season was Lent [the forty days of fasting before Easter], and, although he was ill, he did not consider himself exempt from observing the fast. Thus he was reduced to a condition subject to strange hallucinations. He amused himself on his bed with reading Plautus, but chiefly Cicero, who was his favourite author. Whilst so doing one day, he fell into a fit of unconsciousness, and 1 He does not say that the judge was consul of Aquileia, but it is probable that this was so, and that it was the irritation caused among the magistrates of that city by the publication of the letter, which obliged him to fly Aquileia. s Ep. 3 ad Rufin. 8 Ep. 6, ad Julianum. Ep. xq. thought he saw himself standing before the throne of God. The Judge asked, “Who art thou?" “A Christian," answered Jerome in his trance. “Thou liest,” answered the Almighty; “thou art a Ciceronian." Jerome thought he staggered back in dismay, and sank on his face, covered with confusion.
When he recovered consciousness he promised to cast aside all his heathen books, and resolved to devote his whole attention to the study of divinity.1 In the ardour of his zeal he wrote to Theodosius [name of Roman emperors; Theodosius I (379–395) made Christianity the state religion], an abbot in Cilicia, to announce his desire to embrace the monastic life; and to Rufinus, in Egypt, a letter in which this desire was more vaguely or guardedly expressed.
Shortly after the resolve became more urgent, and he actually retired into the desert, a.d. 374, carrying his library with him, and writing to his friends for more books to assist him in passing the time, which in his solitude dragged somewhat heavily. In his desert cell he wrote the life of Paul, the first hermit, and sent it to Paul of Concordia, a friend, near Aquileia.
The place of his retreat was near Maronia, in Chalcis, a spot which he describes as “ burnt up with the heat of the sun.” There, according to his own account, his skin was scorched brown, he slept on the soil, his bones protruded, he grew ragged and miserable of aspect. The only men he saw were natives, whose tongue he hardly understood, except at long intervals, when he was visited by Evagrius. Being sorely troubled by sensual thoughts, he wisely devoted his mind to the hard task of learning Hebrew, so 1 Ep. 2z ad Eustochium. In spite of his dream and promise he, however, continued his study of classical writers, and afterwards made his monks copy the dialogues of Cicero. He explained Virgil to them at Bethlehem, and answered the accusations of Rufinus that, after all this was only a question of a dream. “ He who upbraids me with a dream, I refer to the prophets who teach that dreams are vain and undeserving of faith/’ Cont. Rufin. i. 30. that it might be kept fully occupied, and not have time for rambling to unlawful subjects. “ What labours did I undertake in learning that alphabet, and acquiring those harsh and aspirated words ! What difficulties I had to undergo ! How often I despaired ! How often I gave it up, and yet again buckled to my task, let my conscience bear witness which suffered, and that of those who led me along this road. Yet, thanks be to God ! now I pluck sweet fruit of letters off that bitter road.”1 It was whilst Jerome was in his desert that the Meletian schism broke out. In 362 this miserable contest was embittered and prevented from dying out by the rash conduct of Lucifer of Cagliari, who ordained Paulinus. An account of this schism has been already given, and that sad page in the history of the Church need not be repeated here.3 Antioch had at the same time two bishops, both orthodox, and the Catholics were broken into two parties adhering to the rival prelates. The Eastern bishops recognised Meletius, the Roman Church Paulinus. There was also Vitalis, ordained Bishop of Antioch by Apollinaris; but there was, moreover, a fourth claimant — Euzoius, an Arian [followers of Arius, who taught that the Son is a created being, not fully God]. The East at this time was distracted with questions as to the term hypostasis; whether it was applicable to the Three Persons of the Trinity. Syrian monks invaded Jerome’s solitude, and importuned him to confess the Three Hypostases. He answered that he fully believed in the Three Persons, but could not take Hypostasis to mean anything but Essence. They insisted that he should accept the phrase as well as the doctrine. In his perplexity he applied to Pope Damasus of Rome. It was natural that he should do so. Rome was associated with many solemn moments of his undisciplined youth, and with his subsequent baptism; and her bishops had been conspicuously true to the faith, except in the one sad instance for which Liberius had lived to atone. Their primacy had been adorned by faithfulness. “ While foxes were in the vineyard,” wrote S. Jerome, “and the seamless robe was rent, he felt moved to seek food for his soul where the heritage had been kept from corruptions.” The kindness of Damasus invited him, though his grandeur was over-awing. Following “ Christ only as Chief,” Jerome professed to be in communion with the see of Peter [a bishop’s “see” is his diocese, named from his seat (Latin sedes)]. “ On this rock, I know, the Church is built; whoso eats the Lamb outside that house is profane. I know not Vitalis, I disown Meletius, I know not Paulinus. Whoso gathers not with thee, scatters; that is, whoso is not of Christ is of Antichrist.” He begs Damasus, “ by the crucified Salvation of the world,” to signify whether the belief in Three Persons may be expressed by “ Three Hypostases intimating, at the same time, his own opinion that no explanations can clear the phrase from the “poison of Tritheism.”1 This appeal was made about the beginning of 377, and in the following year arrived the answer to it by Damasus, addressed to Paulinus.
About 397 S. Jerome left his retreat and came to Antioch, where he was ordained priest by Paulinus. Whilst there he wrote a dialogue against the Luciferians, headed by one Hilary — an impracticable party of narrow bigots, who reproduced, in great measure, the hard austerity of the Novatians and the Donatists.
Probably in 380 S. Jerome went to Constantinople, where he had the gratification of hearing S. Gregory Nazianzen give sermons and instructions. He remained two or three years at Constantinople, arrested by the eloquence of S. Gregory, and occupied in translating into Latin, and con tinuing the chronicle of Eusebius, and in translating the homilies of Origen on Jeremiah and Ezekiel. JEROME IN THE DESERT.
Thence, in 382, he went to Rome; or perhaps he may have returned to Antioch in 381, and sailed thence to Rome ln 3S2. In that year a council was held in the Eternal City about the matter of the Antiochian schism and the ! heresy of Apollinaris. In this council Jerome probably took part. Damasus formed a high opinion of his learning and merits, and constituted him his secretary. He consulted him on scriptural points, which his Hebrew scholarship 1 enabled him to pronounce an opinion upon with authority. He also, at the request of the Pope, corrected the Latin version of the New Testament, then in common use, and then went on to revise the Psalter by the Hebrew. He wrote against Helvidius, who denied the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and he also addressed a letter or treatise on virginity to Eustochium, daughter of S. Paula.1 S. Jerome had at first been greatly esteemed by the Roman Christians. But the roughness and bitterness of his nature, his open scorn for the fopperies and meannesses of some of the clergy,2 and his success in drawing Roman ladies like Marcella, and Paula to the monastic life, had involved him in such odium, that even his outward aspect, his “ walk and smile,” furnished occasion for gross calumny. Disgusted by obloquy which doubtless broke forth unrestrained after the death of his patron Damasus, Jerome quitted Rome (a.d. 385) in a mood which had little of selfmistrust or meekness, calling himself “ a fool for wishing to sing the Lord's song in a strange land,” and telling his female friends that “ at Christ’s tribunal the character of every man’s life would appear.”8 He set sail for Antioch, where he saw Paulinus, and thence started during the cold of winter for Jerusalem, where he visited the sacred places. 2 See the sarcastic description in Ep. 22, c. 28, of clergy dressed in the extreme of fashion, dainty and elegant as bridegrooms, and wheedling ladies out of articles that suited their tastes. 8 Ep. 45.
Almost directly after he left Rome, Paula, the wealthy widow whom he had converted to monastic principles, finding Rome no longer endurable, started with the intention of overtaking him. This she probably succeeded in doing at Cyprus, and she was able under his directions to visit with him all the spots consecrated by the Gospel narrative in the Holy Land. Thence they went together to Egypt to study the manner of life of the hermits and obtain hints for the establishment of similar religious societies in Palestine. Having acquired the information they required, Jerome and Paula returned to the Holy Land, and settled at Bethlehem, not to leave it, and there Jerome built for himself a little monastery, and Paula a convent. In a poor and narrow cell of his monastic house, this glorious cenobite accomplished the translation and commentary of the Scriptures. He produced thus that Vulgate which has made him “the master of Christian prose for all following ages.”1 S. Jerome was essentially the preacher of Monachism, and he preached it at a time when the Roman world was ready to lend him its ear. Society was breaking up under j its vices, ruin was falling on the empire, blow on blow. Rome, the capital of the world, had become the prey of barbarians. During his sojourn in Rome, Jerome had i spread the love for monastic life with as much zeal as, success. At Bethlehem he continued this work, and led from the bosom of Italy numerous recruits, who, seeing the vanity of worldly hopes in a world falling to pieces, enrolled themselves in the monastic legions. He had no patience with those good Christians who would not leave all and come into the desert to him.
But his admiration for monastic life did not blind him to the vices and abuses which already appeared among the cenobites. No one has denounced, no one has branded, more 1 Oxanam, Civilisation au Cinquieme Siecle, ii. p. 100. energetically than he the false monks, the false penitents, the false widows and virgins.
This legitimate severity inspired him with the more lively admiration for the first great founders of monastic life, whose traditions he collected, and whose atmosphere he had breathed in Egypt. He undertook to write the lives of some of the most illustrious — of Paul, of Hilarion, of the solitary Malchus, whom he had known and heard in Syria; he added to these the biographies of the illustrious Roman women who, a century later, had renewed even in the bosom of Rome marvels worthy of the Thebaid [the desert region of Upper (southern) Egypt]. S. Jerome, though he had retired to a solitude, had not retreated from the arena of polemical disputes. Wherever any dissentient from the doctrine or practice of the Church ventured to express his opinions, Jerome hurled the thunders of his interdict from his cell at Bethlehem. No one was more perpetually involved in controversy, or opposed with greater rancour of personal hostility, than this earnest advocate of unworldly seclusion. He was engaged in a vehement and lengthy dispute with S. Augustine, on the question whether S. Peter's weakness and S. Paul’s rebuke at Antioch were simulated or real. But his repose was most embittered by his acrimonious and obstinate contest with Rufinus, the friend of his youth, which was rather a personal that a polemic strife, and which, one would have thought, two such men must have seen at once was a grievous breach of Christian charity.
In one controversy, Christendom acknowledged and hailed him as her champion. Jovinian and Vigilantius disturbed the prevalent belief in the sanctity of relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor], and the superior merit of celibacy. Their effect upon the dominant i sentiment of the times may be estimated by the language of i wrath, bitterness, contempt, and abhorrence with which Jerome assails these men. Jovinian, a monk, asserted, Lives 0/ the Saints.
1. That all sins were equal in heinousness. 2. That it was not possible for man to sin after baptism. 3. That fasting was unprofitable. 4. That a state of marriage was as acceptable with God as a state of voluntary celibacy; though for his own part, Jovinian had no intention of marrying.1 To these doctrines Vigilantius added, if possible, more hated tenets. He condemned the respect paid to martyrs and their relics; he questioned the miracles performed at their tombs; he condemned the lighting of lamps before them as a pagan superstition; he rejected the invocation of saints; he blamed the custom of Christians selling their property to disperse the proceeds promiscuously in charity; he protested against the whole monastic life, as interfering with the duty of a Christian to his neighbour. These doctrines were not without their followers; the resentment of Jerome was embittered by their effect on some of the noble ladies of Rome, who began to fall off to marriage. Even some bishops embraced the doctrines of Vigilantius, and, asserting that enforced celibacy led the way to secret debauchery, refused to ordain unmarried deacons. The tone of Jerome's indignant writings against these new heretics is that of a man suddenly arrested in his triumphant career by some utterly unexpected opposition; his resentment is mingled with a kind of wonder that men should exist who could entertain such strange and daring tenets. The length to which he draws out this answer to Jovinian seems rather the outpouring of his wrath and his learning than a serious argument. But this treatise was not favourably received at Rome, even the friends of Jerome, nay, the zealous Pammachius himself, were offended by the fierceness and coarseness of his first invective against Jovinian, and his contemptuous disparagement of marriage. The injustice of his personal charges is shown, and the 1 S. August. De Haeres. c. 82; S. Hieron. Haeres. i. 3. I. JEROME EXPLAINING THE SCRIPTURES TO S. PAULA AND TO EUSTOCHIE HER DAUGHTER. from a Bible written for Charles the Bald in the Abbey of S. Martin [St. Martin of Tours (d. 397), soldier turned bishop], at Tour3. Sept. 30. charges refuted by the more temperate statements oi Augustine, and by his own admissions. He was obliged, in his apology, to mitigate his vehemence, and fall reluctantly into a milder strain. Yet when he heard of the death of the heretic, he could not refrain himself from the indecent burst of joy — “He has not breathed, he has belched forth his soul over his waterfowl and pork.”1 But his language to Jovinian is sober, dispassionate, and argumentative, in comparison with that to Vigilantius, — not vigilant indeed but sleepy2 — he calls him. S. Jerome was mixed up in a miserable strife with John, Bishop of Jerusalem, about the writings of Origen. S. Jerome was an admirer of the great Alexandrian writer, and had some years before told S. Paula that those who called Origen a heretic were a pack of “ mad dogs.” His friend Rufinus was now a priest at Jerusalem, and was an enthusiastic admirer of Origen. John of Jerusalem also leaned towards Origenism, that is, he admired his writings, though he did not adopt his errors. S. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, an implacable foe to Origenism, was in Jerusalem in 394, and he insultingly and defiantly disregarded the authority and position of John, its bishop. Pie went so far as to ordain Jerome’s brother Paulin ian priest, without permission of the diocesan, and without even informing him of his highhanded intrusion. When called to task for this, he excused himself by denouncing John as an Origenist heretic* and Jerome, who had perhaps some grudge against his bishop, or who was persuaded to dislike him by S. Epiphanius, joined sides with the Bishop of Salamis. This naturally led to an estrangement between himself and his friend Rufinus. Vigilantius openly attacked the orthodoxy of Jerome, and caused suspicion to prevail in the West that he was tainted with Origenist errors. This tended to confirm Jerome in 1 Ad v. Vigilant. 2 “ Vigilantius. seu verius Dormantius." his adhesion to the opposite side. He Latinized the letter of Epiphanius and dispersed it over the West, and wrote a fierce letter to Vigilantius denying all sympathy with Origen. John of Jerusalem then ordered S. Jerome to leave Bethlehem, and when he refused, John denied his monks permission to enter the church at Jerusalem or the holy manger. Thereupon S. Epiphanius recommended the monks to break off communion with their bishop till he had purged himself of Origenism. Jerome and his monks did so. This miserable and wicked strife continued for more than three years. Various attempts were made to patch up the quarrel, but in vain. Archelaus, Count of Egypt, ashamed that the scandal should continue, interfered, but his good offices were rejected. John appealed to Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, who sent the priest Isidore to Jerusalem to effect a reconciliation, but without result. S. Jerome wrote a long apology to Theophilus, and at the same time John of Jerusalem sent him a letter containing a profession of faith, and a charge of schismatical conduct and of insubordination against Jerome and his monks. One angry tract called forth another, till at last Jerome himself became sensible of the wretchedness of such a quarrel, and Augustine entreated him to close a scene which chilled and saddened every true friendship.
His last controversial writings were directed against the Pelagians [followers of Pelagius, who taught people could be good without God’s grace]. Shortly before his death he wrote to Alypius and Augustine, warmly congratulating them on their successful labours against that heresy. This is the last of his extant writings. Pie died on September 30, 419/ doubtless in full Christian peace, although the account of his last moments, which suggested the picture of “S. Jerome's last communion," is found in a work which deserves no credit.2 1 S. Prosper in his Chronicle says 420, but the balance of probabilities is in favcut of his having died in 419.
2 De morte Hieronymi, by the pseudo-Eusebius. THE LAST COMMUNION OF 8. JEROME. After the Picture by Domemchmo m the Vatican S. Jerome.
The one conspicuous blot on Jerome’s character, a controversial fierceness which his religion could not soothe, and which seldom allowed him to be just or charitable, has led many, in modern times, to forget his better qualities, and the great services which he rendered to the Church by his unwearied labours in the field of Scripture interpretation. S. Jerome was buried at Bethlehem in his cave, and his body remained there till the 13th century, when it is said to have been translated to the church of S. Maria Maggiore at Rome, but no authentic record of the translation exists. A head at Nepi, part of the chin in the altar of the Blessed Virgin in the Vatican, part of his thigh in the church of S. Cecilia, his girdle in that of S. Mark, in the Jesuit church his arm. Also in S. Maria Maggiore “his chasuble, stole and maniple, with which he was wont to celebrate in the chapel of the holy manger at Bethlehem,” though, as a matter of fact, S. Jerome, through mistaken humility, never would celebrate, as we know from his own writings. A jaw and entire arm at Florence, the jaw has two teeth and part of the chin attached to it. At Bologna part of shank, one finger, and a thumb. Part of skull anciently at Clugny, a finger at Paris in the church of the Trinitarians, an arm at Malines, two bones at Tournai, at Beaupres near Douai a bone, a finger at Prag, a portion of the spine in the church of S. Panthaleon at Cologne, in the Carthusian [a strict order of hermit-monks founded by St. Bruno in 1084] church there a rib. Other relics at Andechs in Bavaria and the abbey of S. Georgen in Tyrol. The head entire in the Escurial, the tongue incorrupt in the Isle of Samos, &c. S. Jerome is represented in art with a cardinal’s hat, though he never was a cardinal priest at Rome; but perhaps because he acted as secretary to Pope Damasus. Also with a lion, from whose foot he is said to have plucked a thorn, but the story has been transferred to him from the life of S. Gerasimus. Often he is represented in a cave half naked, with long beard and hair, and with books and pen, sometimes with spectacles on the table to signify that he was advanced in age.
