Saint Jerome

Jerome, born around 347 at Stridon in Dalmatia, studied in Rome. The young teenager devoted himself passionately to the study of historians, grammarians and philosophers; very carefully and at great expense, he built up a library. After indulging somewhat in the delights of Rome, he was baptised by Pope Liberus. Following a trip to Trier and Gaul, he settled in Antioch in Syria. It was there that, in a dream, he heard the Sovereign Judge reproach him: "You are a Ciceronian and not a Christian". He then went to the solitude of Chalcis, where he mortified himself in a frightening way, while perfecting his Greek and taking Hebrew lessons from a Jew. Ordained a priest in Antioch, he then became a pupil of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus in Constantinople, before returning to Rome, where, at the request of Pope Damasus, he began to revise the scriptures. Setting off again for Palestine, he settled in a monastery in Bethlehem. It was here that he spent the last thirty-four years of his life. He divided his time between prayer and mortification, study and work, supernatural guidance and the teaching of his spiritual daughters in a nearby convent. He was consulted as an oracle on all sides because of his prodigious knowledge of all scriptural matters: Pope Damasus and Saint Augustine had recourse to his services. He pursued the heretics in vigorous writings. He compared, revised, translated and commented on the various texts of Sacred Scripture: Hebrew, Greek and Latin. In particular, it was he who established the text of our current Latin Bible, known as the Vulgate. He died in 420: his body, first buried in Bethlehem, was later taken to Rome to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.