St. Jerome
(345-420)
One of the first Doctors of the Church, St.
Jerome (c. 347 – 420) is widely known as the translator of the Bible
into Latin (the Vulgate), but he was also the author of many other works.
He penned many letters and theological treatise, chiefly in defense of the
Faith, arguing against the Arian heresy, rampant in his time, and
defending the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Mother, as
well a attacks against Christian pious practices, the cultus of
martyrs and relics, the vow of poverty, and clerical celibacy. After St.
Augustine, St. Jerome is the most prolific writer of the ancient
Christians.
We most often see St. Jerome in art
pictured in his ascetic monastic cell or in the desert, and he was very much
attracted to the ascetic life, but spent a good part of his life in more
courtly places, while continuing always to lead a simple monastic
life. He was ordained a priest in 378, but only received the honor with
the stipulation that he not be appointed pastor of a church, as he felt his
calling was to be a recluse, to live a monastic life. He was a
counsellor of Pope Damasas (Chair of Peter 366-384), serving as secretary of the
council deciding over the problem of the schism in Antiochin the
380s. Jerome aquitted his duties so well that the pope kept him in
Rome as his own secretary, and set him in charge of "cleaning
up" the copies of the New Testament and the Psalms which had suffered
already by poor copying and translation. This was the beginning
of St. Jerome's work on the Vulgate.
In the 1890s, Pope Damasus having died, and having
had enough of city life, St. Jerome moved to the Holy Land, making for himself
a monastic cell outside of Bethlehem. By the early 400s, he had completed
his translation of the Bible, making his way through the Old Testament, even
learning a new language (Chaldaic) in his scholarly pursuit of perfection.
By the time he had finished, St. Jerome had translated or
"corrected" all the books of the Old and New Testament except
the Books of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and the two Books of the
Maccabees. Leading always a life of purity and prayer, St.
Jerome's God-given gift for languages and his knowlege and understanding of
Sacred Scripture made him the ideal candidate for this undertaking of the
Blessed Trinity.
* St.
Jerome is very often depicted with a lion and is associated with the medieval
story in which the saint's charity in pulling a thorn
from a lion's paw makes a pet of the lion. In art, this Doctor of the
Church usually has a lion reclining at his feet as he writes with a
feather in a big book, indicating the Bible. Ther is, however, no
mention of a pet lion in any of the multitudinous letters St. Jerome wrote in
his lifetime, nor any other documentation of such an alliance. It's believed
that this story was transferred to St. Jerome from the tradition of St. Gerasimos, a monk also of the fifth
century. The confusion is easily forgiven, though, because a lion
seems such an appropriate symbol for as strong and unflinching a champion of
the Faith as St. Jerome.
St. Jerome died on September 30th, 420. His relics lie in the Sistine
Chapel in St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome.
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