JEROME, ST (Hieronymus, in full Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus) (c. 340-420), was born at Strido (modern Strigau?), a town on the border of Dalmatia fronting Pannonia, destroyed by the Goths in A.D. 377. What is known of Jerome has mostly been recovered from his own writings. He appears to have been born about 340; his parents were Christians, orthodox though living among people mostly Arians and wealthy. He was at first educated at home, Bonosus, a life-long friend, sharing his youthful studies, and was afterwards sent to Rome. Donatus taught him grammar and explained the Latin poets. Victorinus taught him rhetoric. He attended the law-courts, and listened to the Roman advocates pleading in the Forum. He went to the schools of philosophy, and heard lectures on Plato, Diogenes, Clitomachus and Carneades; the conjunction of names show how philosophy had become a dead tradition. accuracy of his version: “Let him who would challenge aught in this translation,” he says, “ask the Jews.” The result of all this labour was the Latin translation of the Scriptures which, in spite of much opposition from the more conservative party in the church, afterwards became the Vulgate or authorized version; but the Vulgate as we have it now is not exactly Jerome’s Vulgate, for it suffered a good deal from changes made under the influence of the older translations; the text became very corrupt during the middle ages, and in particular all the Apocrypha, except Tobit and Judith, which Jerome translated from the Chaldee, were added from the older versions. (See [Bible]: O.T. Versions.)
Notwithstanding the labour involved in translating the Scriptures, Jerome found time to do a great deal of literary work, and also to indulge in violent controversy. Earlier in life he had a great admiration for Origen, and translated many of his works, and this lasted after he had settled at Bethlehem, for in 389 he translated Origen’s homilies on Luke; but he came to change his opinion and wrote violently against two admirers of the great Alexandrian scholar, John, bishop of Jerusalem, and his own former friend Rufinus.
At Bethlehem also he found time to finish Didymi de spiritu sancto liber, a translation begun at Rome at the request of Pope Damasus, to denounce the revival of Gnostic heresies by Jovinianus and Vigilantius (Adv. Jovinianum lib. II. and Contra Vigilantium liber), and to repeat his admiration of the hermit life in his Vita S. Hilarionis eremitae, in his Vita Malchi monachi captivi, in his translations of the Rule of St Pachomius (the Benedict of Egypt), and in his S. Pachomii et S. Theodorici epistolae et verba mystica. He also wrote at Bethlehem De viris illustribus sive de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, a church history in biographies, ending with the life of the author; De nominibus Hebraicis, compiled from Philo and Origen; and De situ et nominibus locorum Hebraicorum.[1] At the same place, too, he wrote Quaestiones Hebraicae on Genesis,[2] and a series of commentaries on Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the Twelve Minor Prophets, Matthew and the Epistles of St Paul. About 394 Jerome came to know Augustine, for whom he held a high regard. He engaged in the Pelagian controversy with more than even his usual bitterness (Dialogi contra pelagianos); and it is said that the violence of his invective so provoked his opponents that an armed mob attacked the monastery, and that Jerome was forced to flee and to remain in concealment for nearly two years. He returned to Bethlehem in 418, and after a lingering illness died on the 30th of September 420.
Jerome “is one of the few Fathers to whom the title of Saint appears to have been given in recognition of services rendered to the Church rather than for eminent sanctity. He is the great Christian scholar of his age, rather than the profound theologian or the wise guide of souls.” His great work was the Vulgate, but his achievements in other fields would have sufficed to distinguish him. His commentaries are valuable because of his knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, his varied interests, and his comparative freedom from allegory. To him we owe the distinction between canonical and apocryphal writings; in the Prologus Galeatus prefixed to his version of Samuel and Kings, he says that the church reads the Apocrypha “for the edification of the people, not for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical doctrines.” He was a pioneer in the fields of patrology and of biblical archaeology. In controversy he was too fond of mingling personal abuse with legitimate argument, and this weakness mars his letters, which were held in high admiration in the early middle ages, and are valuable for their history of the man and his times. Luther in his Table Talk condemns them as dealing only with fasting, meats, virginity, &c. “If he only had insisted upon the works of faith and performed them! But he teaches nothing either about faith, or love, or hope, or the works of faith.”
Editions of the complete works: Erasmus (9 vols., Basel, 1516-1520); Mar. Victorius, bishop of Rieti (9 vols., Rome, 1565-1572); F. Calixtus and A. Tribbechovius (12 vols., Frankfort and Leipzig, 1684-1690); J. Martianay (5 vols., incomplete Benedictine ed., Paris, 1693-1706); D. Vallarsi (11 vols., Verona, 1734-1742), the best; Migne, Patrol. Ser. Lat. (xxii.-xxix.). The De viris illust. was edited by Herding in 1879. A selection is given in translation by W. H. Fremantle, “Select Library of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers,” 2nd series, vol. vi. (New York, 1893). Biographies are prefixed to most of the above editions. See also lives by F. Z. Collombet (Paris and Lyons, 1844); O. Zöckler (Gotha, 1865); E. L. Cutts (London, 1878); C. Martin (London, 1888); P. Largent (Paris, 1898); F. W. Farrar, Lives of the Fathers, ii. 150-297 (Edinburgh, 1889). Additional literature is cited in Hauck-Herzog’s Realencyk. für prot. Theol. viii. 42.
[1] Compare the critical edition of these two works in Lagarde’s Onomastica sacra (Götting. 1870).
[2] See Lagarde’s edition appended to his Genesis Graece (Leipzig, 1868).