St. Jerome.
Lat. Sanctus Hieronymus. Ital. San Geronimo or Girolamo. Fr. St. Jérome, Hiérome, or Géroisme. Ger. Der Heilige Hieronimus. Patron of scholars and students, and more particularly of students in theology. (Sept. 30, A.D. 420.)
Of the four Latin Doctors, St. Jerome, as a subject of painting, is by far the most popular. The reasons for this are not merely the exceedingly interesting and striking character of the man, and the picturesque incidents of his life, but also his great importance and dignity as founder of Monachism in the West, and as author of the universally received translation of the Old and New Testament into the Latin language (called ‘The Vulgate’). There is scarcely a collection of pictures in which we do not find a St. Jerome, either doing penance in the desert, or writing his famous translation, or meditating on the mystery of the Incarnation.
Jerome was born about A.D. 342, at Stridonium, in Dalmatia. His father, Eusebius, was rich; and as he showed the happiest disposition for learning, he was sent to Rome to finish his studies. There, through his own passions, and the evil example of his companions, he fell into temptation, and for a time abandoned himself to worldly pleasures. But the love of virtue, as well as the love of learning, was still strong within him: he took up the profession of law, and became celebrated for his eloquence in pleading before the tribunals. When more than thirty, he travelled into Gaul, and visited the schools of learning there. It was about this time that he was baptized, and vowed himself to perpetual celibacy. In 373, he travelled into the East, to animate his piety by dwelling for a time among the scenes hallowed by the presence of the Saviour; and, on his way thither, he visited some of the famous Oriental hermits and ascetics, of whom he has given us such a graphic account, and whose example inspired him with a passion for solitude and a monastic life. Shortly after his arrival in Syria, he retired to a desert in Chalcis, on the confines of Arabia, and there he spent four years in study and seclusion, supporting himself by the labour of his hands. He has left us a most vivid picture of his life of penance in the wilderness; of his trials and temptations, his fastings, his sickness of soul and body: and we must dwell for a moment on his own description, in order to show with what literal and circumstantial truth the painters have rendered it. He says, in one of his epistles, ‘Oh how often, in the desert, in that vast solitude which, parched by the sultry sun, affords a dwelling to the monks, did I fancy myself in the midst of the luxuries of Rome! I sate alone, for I was full of bitterness. My misshapen limbs were rough with sackcloth, and my skin so squalid that I might have been mistaken for an Ethiopian. Tears and groans were my occupation every day and all day long. If sleep surprised me unawares, my naked bones, which scarcely held together, rattled on the earth.’ His companions, he says, ‘were scorpions and wild beasts;’ his home, ‘a recess among rocks and precipices.’ Yet, in the midst of this horrible self-torture and self-abasement, he describes himself as frequently beset by temptations to sin and sensual indulgence, and haunted by demons: at other times, as consoled by voices and visions from heaven. Besides these trials of the flesh and the spirit, he had others of the intellect. His love of learning, his admiration of the great writers of classical antiquity,—of Plato and Cicero,—made him impatient of the rude simplicity of the Christian historians. He describes himself as fasting before he opened Cicero; and, as a further penance, he forced himself to study Hebrew, which at first filled him with disgust, and this disgust appeared to him a capital sin. In one of his distempered visions, he fancied he heard the last trumpet sounded in his ear by an angel, and summoning him before the judgment-seat of God. ‘Who art thou?’ demanded the awful voice. ‘A Christian,’ replied the trembling Jerome. ‘‘Tis false!’ replied the voice, ‘thou art no Christian: thou art a Ciceronian. Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also.’ He persevered, and conquered the difficulties of Hebrew; and then, wearied by the religious controversies in the East, after ten years’ residence there, he returned to Rome.
But neither the opposition he had met with, nor his four years of solitude and penance in the desert, had subdued the fiery enthusiasm of temperament which characterised this celebrated man. At Rome he boldly combated the luxurious self-indulgence of the clergy, and preached religious abstinence and mortification. He was particularly remarkable for the influence he obtained over the Roman women; we find them, subdued or excited by his eloquent exhortations, devoting themselves to perpetual chastity, distributing their possessions among the poor, or spending their days in attendance on the sick, and ready to follow their teacher to the Holy Land—to the desert—even to death. His most celebrated female convert was Paula, a noble Roman matron, a descendant of the Scipios and the Gracchi. Marcella, another of these Roman ladies, was the first who, in the East, collected together a number of pious women to dwell together in community: hence she is, by some authors, considered as the first nun; but others contend that Martha, the sister of Mary Magdalene, was the first who founded a religious community of women.
After three years’ sojourn at Rome, St. Jerome returned to Palestine, and took up his residence in a monastery he had founded at Bethlehem. When, in extreme old age, he became sensible of the approach of death, he raised with effort his emaciated limbs, and, commanding himself to be carried into the chapel of the monastery, he received the Sacrament for the last time from the hands of the priest, and soon after expired. He died in 420, leaving, besides his famous translation of the Scriptures, numerous controversial writings, epistles, and commentaries.
We read in the legendary history of St. Jerome, that one evening, as he sat within the gates of his monastery at Bethlehem, a lion entered, limping, as in pain; and all the brethren, when they saw the lion, fled in terror: but Jerome arose, and went forward to meet him, as though he had been a guest. And the lion lifted up his paw, and St. Jerome, on examining it, found that it was wounded by a thorn, which he extracted; and he tended the lion till he was healed. The grateful beast remained with his benefactor, and Jerome confided to him the task of guarding an ass which was employed in bringing firewood from the forest. On one occasion, the lion having gone to sleep while the ass was at pasture, some merchants passing by carried away the latter; and the lion, after searching for him in vain, returned to the monastery with drooping head, as one ashamed. St. Jerome, believing that he had devoured his companion, commanded that the daily task of the ass should be laid upon the lion, and that the faggots should be bound on his back, to which he magnanimously submitted, until the ass was recovered; which was in this wise. One day, the lion, having finished his task, ran hither and thither, still seeking his companion; and he saw a caravan of merchants approaching, and a string of camels, which, according to the Arabian custom, were led by an ass; and when the lion recognised his friend, he drove the camels into the convent, and so terrified the merchants, that they confessed the theft, and received pardon from St. Jerome.
The introduction of the lion into pictures of St. Jerome is supposed to refer to this legend; but in this instance, as in many others, the reverse was really the case. The lion was in very ancient times adopted as the symbol befitting St. Jerome, from his fervid, fiery nature, and his life in the wilderness; and in later times, the legend invented to explain the symbol was gradually expanded into the story as given above.
Representations of St. Jerome, in pictures, prints, and sculpture, are so numerous that it were in vain to attempt to give any detailed account of them, even of the most remarkable. All, however, may be included under the following classification, and, according to the descriptions given, may be easily recognised.
The devotional subjects and single figures represent St. Jerome in one of his three great characters. 1. As Patron Saint and Doctor of the Church. 2. As Translator and Commentator of the Scriptures. 3. As Penitent. As Doctor of the Church, and teacher, he enters into every scheme of decoration, and finds a place in all sacred buildings. As Saint and Penitent, he is chiefly to be found in the convents and churches of the Jeronymites, who claim him as their Patriarch.
When placed before us as the patron saint and father of divinity, he is usually standing full length, either habited in the cardinal’s robes, or with the cardinal’s hat lying at his feet. It may be necessary to observe, that there is no historical authority for making St. Jerome a cardinal. Cardinal-priests were not ordained till three centuries later; but as the other fathers were all of high ecclesiastical rank, and as St. Jerome obstinately refused all such distinction, it has been thought necessary, for the sake of his dignity, to make him a cardinal: another reason may be, that he performed, in the court of Pope Dalmasius, those offices since discharged by the cardinal-deacon. In some of the old Venetian pictures, instead of the official robes of a cardinal, he is habited in loose ample red drapery, part of which is thrown over his head. When represented with his head uncovered, his forehead is lofty and bald, his beard is very long, flowing even to his girdle; his features fine and sharp, his nose aquiline. In his hand he holds a book or a scroll, and frequently the emblematical church, of which he was the great support and luminary: and, to make the application stronger and clearer, rays of light are seen issuing from the door of the church.
1. A signal instance of the treatment of Jerome as patron saint occurs in a fine picture by Wohlgemuth, the master of Albert Dürer.[253] It is an altar-piece representing the glorification of the saint, and consists of three compartments. In the centre, St. Jerome stands on a magnificent throne, and lays his left hand on the head of a lion, raised up on his hind legs: the donors of the picture, a man and a woman, kneel in front; on each side are windows opening on a landscape, wherein various incidents of the life of St. Jerome are represented; on the right, his Penance in the Wilderness and his Landing at Cyprus; and on the left, the merchants who had carried off the ass bring propitiatory gifts, which the saint rejects, and other men are seen felling wood and loading the lion. On the inner shutters or wings of the central picture, are represented, on the right, the three other doctors,—St. Augustine, with the flaming heart; St. Ambrose, with the bee-hive; both habited as bishops; and St. Gregory, wearing his tiara, and holding a large book (his famous Homilies) in his hand. On the left, three apostles with their proper attributes, St. Andrew, St. Thomas, and St. Bartholomew; on the other side are represented, to the right, St. Henry II. holding a church (the cathedral of Bamberg), and a sword, his proper attributes; and his wife St. Cunegunda.[254] On the left St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Martin. There are besides, to close in the whole, two outer doors: on the inner side, to the right, St. Joseph and St. Kilian;[255] on the left, St. Catherine and St. Ursula; and on the exterior of the whole the mass of St. Gregory, with various personages and objects connected with the Passion of Christ. The whole is about six feet high, dated 1511, and may bear a comparison, for elaborate and multifarious detail and exquisite painting, with the famous Van Eyck altar-piece in St. John’s Church at Ghent.[256]
2. In his character of patron, St. Jerome is a frequent subject of sculpture. There is a Gothic figure of him in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, habited in the cardinal’s robes, the lion fawning upon him.
When St. Jerome is represented in his second great character, as the translator of the Scriptures, he is usually seated in a cave or in a cell, busied in reading or in writing; he wears a loose robe thrown over his wasted form; and either he looks down intent on his book, or he looks up as if awaiting heavenly inspiration: sometimes an angel is dictating to him.
1. In an old Italian print, which I have seen, he is seated on the ground reading, in spectacles;—an anachronism frequent in the old painters. Sometimes he is seated under the shade of a tree; or within a cavern, writing at a rude table formed of a stump of a tree, or a board laid across two fragments of rock; as in a beautiful picture by Ghirlandajo, remarkable for its solemn and tranquil feeling.[257]
2. Very celebrated is an engraving of this subject by Albert Dürer. The scene is the interior of a cell, at Bethlehem; two windows on the left pour across the picture a stream of sunshine, which is represented with wonderful effect. St. Jerome is seen in the background, seated at a desk, most intently writing his translation of the Scriptures; in front the lion is crouching, and a fox is seen asleep. These two animals are here emblems;—the one, of the courage and vigilance, the other of the wisdom or acuteness, of the saint. The execution of this print is a miracle of Art, and it is very rare. There is an exquisite little picture by Elzheimer copied from it, and of the same size, at Hampton Court. I need hardly observe, that here the rosary and the pot of holy water are anachronisms, as well as the cardinal’s hat. By Albert Dürer we have also St. Jerome writing in a cavern; and St. Jerome reading in his cell: both woodcuts.
3. Even more beautiful is a print by Lucas v. Leyden, in which St. Jerome is reclining in his cell and reading intently; the lion licks his foot.
4. In a picture by Lucas Cranach, Albert of Brandenburg, elector of Mayence (1527), is represented in the character of St. Jerome, seated in the wilderness, and writing at a table formed of a plank laid across two stumps of trees: he is in the cardinal-robes; and in the foreground a lion, a hare, a beaver, a partridge, and a hind, beautifully painted, express the solitude of his life. In the background the caravan of merchants is seen entering the gate of the monastery, conducted by the faithful lion.
5. The little picture by Domenichino, in our National Gallery, represents St. Jerome looking up from his book, and listening to the accents of the angel. 6. In a picture by Tiarini,[258] it is St. John the Evangelist, and not an angel, who dictates while he writes. 7. In a picture by Titian, St. Jerome, seated, holds a book, and gazes up at a crucifix suspended in the skies; the lion is drinking at a fountain. Out of twenty prints of St. Jerome after Titian, there are at least eight which represent him at study or writing.
It is in the double character of Doctor of the Church, and translator of the Scriptures, that we find St. Jerome so frequently introduced into pictures of the Madonna, and grouped with other saints. Two of the most celebrated pictures in the world suggest themselves here as examples:—1. ‘The Madonna della Pesce’ of Raphael; where the Virgin, seated on a raised throne, holds the Infant Christ in her arms; on her right hand, the archangel Raphael presents the young Tobias, who holds the fish, the emblem of Christianity or Baptism. On the other side kneels St. Jerome, holding an open book, his beard sweeping to his girdle; the lion at his feet; the Infant Christ, while he bends forward to greet Tobias, has one hand upon St. Jerome’s book: the whole is a beautiful and expressive allegory.[259] 2. Correggio’s picture, called ‘The St. Jerome of Parma,’ represents the Infant Christ on the knees of his mother: Mary Magdalene bends to kiss his feet: St. Jerome stands in front, presenting his translation of the Scriptures.
85 St. Jerome doing Penance (Titian)
The penitent St. Jerome seems to have been adopted throughout the Christian Church as the approved symbol of Christian penitence, self-denial, and self-abasement. No devotional subject, if we except the ‘Madonna and Child’ and the ‘Magdalene,’ is of such perpetual recurrence. In the treatment it has been infinitely varied. The scene is generally a wild rocky solitude: St. Jerome, half naked, emaciated, with matted hair and beard, is seen on his knees before a crucifix, beating his breast with a stone. The lion is almost always introduced, sometimes asleep, or crouching at his feet; sometimes keeping guard, sometimes drinking at a stream. The most magnificent example of this treatment is by Titian:[260] St. Jerome, kneeling on one knee, half supported by a craggy rock, and holding the stone, looks up with eager devotion to a cross, artlessly fixed into a cleft in the rock; two books lie on a cliff behind; at his feet are a skull and hour-glass; and the lion reposes in front. The feeling of deep solitude, and a kind of sacred horror breathed over this picture, are inconceivably fine and impressive. Another by Titian, but inferior, is in the Louvre; and there are at least twelve engravings of St. Jerome doing penance, after the same painter: among them a superb landscape, in which are seen a lion and a lioness prowling in the wilderness, while the saint is doing penance in the foreground. By Agostino Caracci there is a famous engraving of ‘St. Jerome doing penance in a cave,’ called from its size the great St. Jerome. But to particularise further would be endless: I know scarcely any Italian painter since the fifteenth century who has not treated this subject at least once.
The Spanish painters have rendered it with a gloomy power, and revelled in its mystic significance. In the Spanish gallery of the Louvre I counted at least twenty St. Jeromes: the old German painters and engravers also delighted in it, on account of its picturesque capabilities.
Albert Dürer represents St. Jerome kneeling before a crucifix, which he has suspended against the trunk of a massy tree; an open book is near it; he holds in his right hand a flint-stone, with which he is about to strike his breast, all wounded and bleeding from the blows already inflicted; the lion crouches behind him, and in the distance is a stag.
The penitent St. Jerome is not a good subject for sculpture; the undraped, meagre form, and the abasement of suffering, are disagreeable in this treatment: yet such representations are constantly met with in churches. The famous colossal statue by Torrigiano, now in the Museum at Seville, represents St. Jerome kneeling on a rock, a stone in one hand, a crucifix in the other. At Venice, in the Frari, there is a statue of St. Jerome, standing, with the stone in his hand and the lion at his feet; too majestic for the Penitent. There are several other statues of St. Jerome at Venice, from the Liberi and Lombardi schools, all fine as statues; but the penitent saint is idealised into the patron-saint of penitents.
When figures of St. Jerome as penitent are introduced in Madonna pictures, or in the Passion of Christ, then such figures are devotional, and symbolical, in a general sense, of Christian repentance.
There is an early picture of the Crucifixion, by Raphael,[261] in which he has placed St. Jerome at the foot of the cross, beating his breast with a stone(86).
86 St. Jerome, as Penitent, in a Crucifixion (Raphael)
The pictures from the life of St. Jerome comprise a variety of subjects:—1. ‘He receives the cardinal’s hat from the Virgin:’ sometimes it is the Infant Christ, seated in the lap of the Virgin, who presents it to him. 2. ‘He disputes with the Jewish doctors on the truth of the Christian religion;’ in a curious picture by Juan de Valdes.[262] He stands on one side of a table in an attitude of authority: the rabbis, each of whom has a demon looking over his shoulder, are searching their books for arguments against him. 3. ‘St. Jerome, while studying Hebrew in the solitude of Chalcida, hears in a vision the sound of the last trumpet, calling men to judgment.’ This is a common subject, and styled ‘The Vision of St. Jerome.’ I have met with no example earlier than the fifteenth century. In general he is lying on the ground, and an angel sounds the trumpet from above. In a composition by Ribera he holds a pen in one hand and a penknife in the other: he seems to have been arrested in the very act of mending his pen by the blast of the trumpet: the figure of the saint, wasted even to skin and bone, and his look of petrified amazement, are very fine, notwithstanding the commonplace action. In a picture by Subleyras, in the Louvre, St. Jerome is gazing upwards, with an astonished look; three archangels sound their trumpets from above. In a picture by Antonio Pereda, at Madrid, St. Jerome not only hears in his vision the sound of the last trump, he sees the dead arise from their graves around him. Lastly, by way of climax, I may mention a picture in the Louvre, by a modern French painter, Sigalon: St. Jerome is in a convulsive fit, and the three angels, blowing their trumpets in his ears, are like furies sent to torment and madden the sinner, rather than to rouse the saint.
While doing penance in the desert, St. Jerome was sometimes haunted by temptations, as well as amazed by terrors.
4. Domenichino, in one of the frescoes in St. Onofrio, represents the particular kind of temptation by which the saint was in imagination assailed: while he is fervently praying and beating his breast, a circle of beautiful nymphs, seen in the background, weave a graceful dance. Vasari has had the bad taste to give us a penitent St. Jerome with Venus and Cupids in the background: one arch little Cupid takes aim at him;—an offensive instance of the extent to which, in the sixteenth century, classical ideas had mingled with and depraved Christian Art.[263]
5. Guido. ‘St. Jerome translating the Scriptures while an angel dictates:’ life size and very fine (except the angel, who is weak, and reminds one of a water-nymph[264]); in his pale manner.
6. Domenichino. ‘St. Jerome is flagellated by an angel for preferring Cicero to the Hebrew writings:’ also in the St. Onofrio. The Cicero, torn from his hand, lies at his feet. Here the saint is a young man, and the whole scene is represented as a vision.
7. But St. Jerome was comforted by visions of glory, as well as haunted by terrors and temptations. In the picture by Parmigiano, in our National Gallery, St. Jerome is sleeping in the background, while St. John the Baptist points upwards to a celestial vision of the Virgin and Child, seen in the opening heavens above: the upper part of this picture is beautiful, and full of dignity; but the saint is lying stretched on the earth in an attitude so uneasy and distorted, that it would seem as if he were condemned to do penance even in his sleep; and the St. John has always appeared to me mannered and theatrical.
87 St. Jerome and the Lion (Coll’ Antonio da Fiore) Naples
8. The story of the lion is often represented. St. Jerome is seated in his cell, attired in the monk’s habit and cowl; the lion approaches, and lays his paw upon his knee; a cardinal’s hat and books are lying near him; and, to express the self-denial of the saint, a mouse is peeping into an empty cup (87).[265]
In another example, by Vittore Carpaccio, the lion enters the cell, and three monks, attendants on St. Jerome, flee in terror.
9. The Last Communion of St. Jerome is the subject of one of the most celebrated pictures in the world,—the St. Jerome of Domenichino, which has been thought worthy of being placed opposite to the Transfiguration of Raphael, in the Vatican. The aged saint—feeble, emaciated, dying—is borne in the arms of his disciples to the chapel of his monastery, and placed within the porch. A young priest sustains him; St. Paula, kneeling, kisses one of his thin bony hands; the saint fixes his eager eyes on the countenance of the priest, who is about to administer the sacrament,—a noble dignified figure in a rich ecclesiastical dress; a deacon holds the cup, and an attendant priest the book and taper; the lion droops his head with an expression of grief; the eyes and attention of all are on the dying saint, while four angels, hovering above, look down upon the scene.
Agostino Caracci, in a grand picture now in the Bologna Gallery, had previously treated the same subject with much feeling and dramatic power: but here the saint is not so wasted and so feeble; St. Paula is not present, and the lion is tenderly licking his feet.
Older than either, and very beautiful and solemn, is a picture by Vittore Carpaccio, in which the saint is kneeling in the porch of a church, surrounded by his disciples, and the lion is seen outside.
10. ‘The Death of St. Jerome.’ In the picture by Starnina he is giving his last instructions to his disciples, and the expression of solemn grief in the old heads around is very fine. In a Spanish picture he is extended on a couch, made of hurdles, and expires in the arms of his monks.
In a very fine anonymous print, dated 1614, St. Jerome is dying alone in his cell (this version of the subject is contrary to all authority and precedent): he presses to his bosom the Gospel and the crucifix; the lion looks up in his face roaring, and angels bear away his soul to heaven.
11. ‘The Obsequies of St. Jerome.’ In the picture by Vittore Carpaccio, the saint is extended on the ground before the high altar, and the priests around are kneeling in various attitudes of grief or devotion. The lion is seen on one side.[266]
I will mention here some other pictures in which St. Jerome figures as the principal personage.
St. Jerome introducing Charles V. into Paradise is the subject of a large fresco, by Luca Giordano, on the staircase of the Escurial.
St. Jerome conversing with two nuns, probably intended for St. Paula and St. Marcella.[267]
The sleep of St. Jerome. He is watched by two angels, one of whom, with his finger on his lip, commands silence.[268]
It is worth remarking, that in the old Venetian pictures St. Jerome does not wear the proper habit and hat of a cardinal, but an ample scarlet robe, part of which is thrown over his head as a hood (88).
The history of St. Jerome, in a series, is often found in the churches and convents of the Jeronymites, and generally consists of the following subjects, of which the fourth and sixth are often omitted:—
1. He is baptized. 2. He receives the cardinal’s hat from the Virgin. 3. He does penance in the desert, beating his breast with a stone. 4. He meets St. Augustine. 5. He is studying or writing in a cell. 6. He builds the convent at Bethlehem. 7. He heals the wounded lion. 8. He receives the Last Sacrament. 9. He dies in the presence of his disciples. 10. He is buried.
Considering that St. Jerome has ever been venerated as one of the great lights of the Church, it is singular that so few churches are dedicated to him. There is one at Rome, erected, according to tradition, on the very spot where stood the house of Santa Paula, where she entertained St. Jerome during his sojourn at Rome in 382. For the high altar of this church, Domenichino painted his masterpiece of the Communion of St. Jerome already described. The embarkation of Saint Paula, to follow her spiritual teacher St. Jerome to the Holy Land, is the subject of one of Claude’s most beautiful sea pieces, now in the collection of the Duke of Wellington; another picture of this subject, the figures as large as life, is in the Brera, by a clever Cremonese painter, Giuseppe Bottoni.
St. Jerome has detained its long; the other Fathers are, as subjects of Art, much less interesting.