420
ST JEROME, DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH JEROME (EUSEBIUS HIERONYMUS SOPHRONIUS)
The
father of the Church most learned in the Sacred Scriptures, was born about
the year 342 at Stridon, a small town upon the
confines of Pannonia, Dalmatia and Italy, near Aquileia. His father took
great care to have his son instructed ia religion and in the first principles
of letters at home and afterwards sent him to Rome. Jerome had there for
tutor the famous pagan grammarian Donatus. He became master of the Latin
and Greek tongues (his native language was the Illyrian), read the best writers
in both languages with great application, and made progress in oratory; but
being left without a guide under the discipline of a heathen master he forgot
some of the true piety which had been instilled into him in his childhood.
Jerome went out of this school free indeed from gross vices, but unhappily
a stranger to a Christian spirit and enslaved to vanity and other weaknesses,
as he afterward confessed and bitterly lamented. On the other band he was
baptized at Rome (he was a catechumen till he was at least eighteen) and
he himself tells us that “it was my custom on Sundays to visit, with friends
of my own age and tastes, the tombs of the martyrs and apostles, going down
into those subterranean galleries whose walls on either side preserve the
relics of the dead.” After some three years in Rome he determined to travel
in order to improve his studies and, with his friend Bonosus, he went to
Trier. Here it was that the religious spirit with which he was so deeply
imbued was awakened, and his heart was entirely converted to God.
In
370 Jerome settled down for a time
at Aquileia, where the bishop, St Valerian, had attracted so many good men
that its clergy were famous all over the Western church. With many of these
St Jerome became friendly, and their names appear in his writings. Among
them were St Chromatius, then a priest, who succeeded Valerian; his two brothers,
the deacons Jovinian and Eusebius; St Heliodorus and his nephew Nepotian;
and, above all, Rufinus, first the bosom friend and then the bitter opponent
of Jerome. Already he was beginning to make enemies and provoke strong opposition,
and after two or three years an unspecified conflict broke up the group,
and Jerome decided to withdraw into some distant country. Bonosus, who had
been the companion of his studies and his travels from childhood, went to
live on a desert island in the Adriatic. Jerome himself happened to meet
a well-known priest of Antioch, Evagrius, at Aquileia, which turned his mind
towards the East. With his friends Innocent, Heliodorus and Hylas (a freed
slave of St Melania) he determined to go thither.
St Jerome
arrived in Antioch in 374 and made some stay there. Innocent and Hylas were
struck down by illness and died, and Jerome too sickened. In a letter to St
Eustochium he relates that in the heat of fever he fell into a delirium in
which he seemed to himself to be arraigned before the judgment-seat of Christ.
Being asked who he was, he answered that he was a Christian. “Thou liest
‘, was the reply, “Thou art a Ciceronian: for where thy treasure is, there
is thy heart also.” This experience had a deep effect on him which was deepened
by his meeting with St Malchus, whose strange story is related herein under
October 21. As a result, St Jerome withdrew into the wilderness
of Chalcis, a barren land to the south-east of Antioch, where he spent four
years alone. He suffered much from ill health, and even more from strong
temptations of the flesh.
“In
the remotest part of a wild and stony desert“, he wrote years afterwards
to St Eustochium, “burnt up with the heat of the scorching sun so that it
frightens even the monks that inhabit it, I seemed to myself to be in the
midst of the delights and crowds of Rome...In this exile and prison to which
for the fear of Hell I had voluntarily condemned myself, with no other company
but scorpions and wild beasts, I many times imagined myself witnessing the
dancing of the Roman maidens as if I had been in the midst of them. My face
was pallid with fasting, yet my will felt the assaults of desire: in my cold
body and in my parched-up flesh, which seemed dead before its death, passion
was able to live. Alone with this enemy, I threw myself in spirit at the
feet of Jesus, watering them with my tears, and I tamed my flesh by fasting
whole weeks. I am not ashamed to disclose my temptations, but I grieve that
lam not now what I then was. I often joined night to day crying and beating
my breast till calm returned.” Thus does God allow His servants to be from
time to time severely tried; but the ordinary life of St Jerome was doubtless
quiet, regular and undisturbed. To forestall and ward off the insurgence
of the flesh he added to his corporal austerities a new study, which he hoped
would fix his rambling imagination and give him the victory over himself.
This was to learn Hebrew. “When my soul was on fire with bad thoughts,” says
he writing to the monk Rusticus in 411,
“as a last resource I became a scholar to a monk who had been a
Jew, to learn of him the Hebrew alphabet; and, from the judicious rules of
Quintilian, the copious flowing eloquence of Cicero, the grave style of Fronto,
and the smoothness of Pliny, I turned to this language of hissing and broken-winded
words. What labour it cost me, what difficulties I went through, how often
I despaired and left off, and how I began again to learn, both I myself who
felt the burden can witness, and they also who lived with me. And I thank
our Lord, that I now gather such sweet fruit from the bitter sowing of those
studies.” However, he still continued to read the pagan classics from time
to time.
The church of
Antioch was at this time disturbed by doctrinal and disciplinary disputes.
The monks of the desert of Chalcis vehemently took sides in these disputes
and wanted St Jerome to do the same and to pronounce on the matters at issue. He preferred to stand aloof and
be left to himself, but he wrote two letters to
consult St Damasus, who had been raised to the papal chair in 366, what
course he ought to steer. In the first he says:
“I am joined
in communion with your holiness, that is, with the chair of Peter; upon that
rock I know the Church is built. Whoever eats the Lamb outside of that house
is a profane person. Whoever is not in the ark shall perish in the flood.
I do not know Vitalis I disown Meletius;”
”Paulinus * {* Rival claimants to the see of Antioch.} is a stranger to me. Whoever gathers not with you, scatters;
he who is not Christ’s belongs to Antichrist...Order me, if you please, what
I should do.”
Not
receiving a speedy answer he soon after sent another letter on the same subject.
The answer of Damasus is not extant: but it is certain that he and the West
acknowledged Paulinus as bishop of Antioch, and St Jerome received from
his hands the order of priesthood when he finally left the desert of Chalcis.
Jerome had no wish to be ordained (he never celebrated the holy Sacrifice),
and he only consented on the condition that he should not be obliged to
serve that or any other church by his ministry: his vocation was to be a
monk or recluse.
Soon after he went to Constantinople, there to study the Holy Scriptures under St Gregory Nazianzen.
In several parts of his works Jerome mentions with satisfaction and
gratitude the honour and happiness of having had so great a master in expounding
the divine writings. Upon St Gregory’s leaving Constantinople in 382, St
Jerome went to Rome with Paulinus of Antioch and St Epiphanius to attend
a council which St Damasus held about the schism at Antioch. When the council
was over, Pope Damasus detained him and employed him as his secretary; Jerome,
indeed, claimed that he spoke through the mouth of Damasus.
At the pope’s request
he made a revision, in accordance with the Greek text, of the Latin version
of the gospels, which had been disfigured by “false transcription, by clumsy
correction, and by careless interpolations”, and a first revision of the
Latin psalter.
Side
by side with this official activity he was engaged in fostering and directing
the marvelous flowering of asceticism which was taking place among some of
the noble ladies of Rome. Among them are several of the most famous names
of Christian antiquity: such were St Marcella,
who is referred to herein under January 31, with her sister St Asella
and their mother, St Albina; St Lea; St Melania the Elder, the first one of
them to go to the Holy Land; St Fabiola (December 27); and St
Paula (January 26) with her daughters St Blesilla and St Eustochium
(September 28).
But when St Damasus died in 384, and his protection was
consequently withdrawn from his secretary, St Jerome found himself in a very
difficult position. in the preceding two years, while impressing all Rome
by his personal holiness, learning and honesty, he had also contrived to
get himself widely disliked; on the one hand by pagans and men of evil life
whom he had fiercely condemned and on the other by people of good will who
were offended by the saint’s harsh outspokenness and sarcastic wit. When
he wrote in defence of the fashionable young widow, Blesilla, who had suddenly
renounced the world,
he was witheringly
satirical of pagan society and worldly life, and opposed to her lowliness
the conduct of those who “paint their cheeks with rouge and their eyelids with antimony;
whose plastered faces, too white for those of human beings, look like idols,
and if in a moment of forgetfulness they shed a tear it makes a furrow where
it rolls down the painted cheek; they to whom years do not bring the gravity
of age, who load their heads with other people’s hair, enamel a lost youth
upon the wrinkles of age, and affect a maidenly timidity in the midst of a
troop of grandchildren.”
In the
letter on virginity which he wrote to St Eustochium he was no less scathing at the expense of Christian society,
and made a particular attack on certain of the clergy. “All their anxiety
is about their clothes. You would take them for bridegrooms
rather than for clerics; all they think about is to know the names and houses
and doings of rich ladies”; and he proceeds to describe a particular individual, who
hates fasting, looks forward to the smell of his meals, and has a barbarous
and froward tongue. Jerome wrote to St Marcella of a certain man who wrongly
supposed that he was an object of attack: “I amuse myself by laughing at
the grubs, the owls and the crocodiles, and he takes all that I say to himself...Let
me give him some advice. If he will only conceal his nose and keep his tongue
still he may be taken to be both handsome and learned.”
It cannot
be matter of surprise that, however justified his indignation was, his manner
of expressing it aroused resentment, ills own reputation was attacked with
similar vigour; even his simplicity, his walk and smile, the expression of
his countenance were found fault with. Neither did the severe virtue of the
ladies that were under his direction nor the reservedness of his own behaviour
protect him from calumny: scandalous gossip was circulated about his relations
with St Paula. He was properly indignant and decided to return to the East,
there to seek a quiet retreat. He embarked at Porto in August 385. Before
he left he wrote a fine apologia, in the form of a letter
to St Asella. “Salute Paula and Eustochium”, it concluded, “mine in Christ
whether the world wills it or no... say to them, we shall all stand before
the judgment seat of Christ, and there it shall be seen in what spirit each
has lived.”
At Antioch nine
months later he was joined by Paula, Eustochium and the other Roman religious
women who had resolved to exile themselves with him in the Holy Land. Soon
after arriving at Jerusalem they went to Egypt, to consult with the monks
of Nitria, as well as with Didymus, a famous blind teacher in the school
of Alexandria.
With
the help of Paula’s generosity a monastery for men was built near the basilica
of the Nativity at Bethlehem, together with buildings for three communities
of women. St Jerome himself lived and worked in a large rock-hewn cell near
to our Saviour’s birthplace, and opened a free school, as well as a hospice,
“so that”, as St Paula said, “should Mary and Joseph again visit Bethlehem
there would be a place for them to lodge in”. Here at last were some years
of peace.
“The illustrious Gauls congregate
here, and no sooner has the Briton, so remote from our world, made some progress
in religion than he leaves his early-setting sun to seek a land which he knows
only by reputation and from the Scriptures. And what of the Armenians, the
Persians, the peoples of India and Ethiopia, of Egypt, of Pontus, Cappadocia,
Syria and Mesopotamia?...They throng here and set us the example of every
virtue. The languages differ but the religion is the same; there are as many
different choirs singing the psalms as there are nations...Here bread, and
vegetables grown with our own hands, and milk, country fare, afford us plain
and healthy food. In summer the trees give us shade. In autumn the air is
cool and the fallen leaves restful. In spring our psalmody is sweeter for
the singing of the birds. We do not lack wood when winter snow and cold are
upon us. Let Rome keep its crowds, let its arenas run with blood, its circuses
go mad, its theatres wallow in sensuality and, not to forget our friends,
let the senate of ladies receive their daily visits.”
But Jerome could
not stand aside and be mute when Christian truth was threatened.
He had at Rome composed his book against Helvidius
on the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Helvidius having maintained
that Mary had other children, by St Joseph, after the birth of Christ. This
and certain associated errors were again put forward by one Jovinian.
St Paula’s son-in-law, St Pammachius, and other laymen were scandalized at
his new doctrines, and sent his writings to St Jerome who in 393 wrote two
books against Jovinian. In the first he shows the excellence of virginity
embraced for the sake of virtue, which had been denied by Jovinian, and in
the second confutes his other errors, This treatise was written in Jerome’s
characteristically strong style and certain expressions in it seemed
to some persons in Rome harsh and derogatory from the honour due to matrimony;
St Pammachius informed St Jerome of the offence which he and many others took
at them. Thereupon Jerome wrote his Apology to Pammachius, sometimes
called his third book against Jovinian, in a tone that can hardly have given
his critics satisfaction.
A few years later he had to turn his attention to Vigilantius—“Dormantius,
sleepy”,
he calls him—a Gallo-Roman priest who both decried celibacy and condemned
the veneration of relics, calling those who paid it idolaters and worshippers
of ashes. St Jerome in his answer said:
“We do not worship the relics of the martyrs but we honour them
that we may worship Him whose martyrs they are. We honour the servants that
the respect which is paid to them may be reflected back on the Lord.” He
vindicates the honour paid to martyrs from idolatry because no Christian ever
worshipped them as gods, and in order to show that the saints pray for us
he says: “If the apostles and martyrs while still
living upon earth can pray for other men, how much more may they do it after
their victories ? Have they less power now they are with Jesus Christ?”
He defends
the monastic state, and says that a monk seeks security by flying occasions
and dangers because he mistrusts his own weakness and knows that there is
no safety if a man sleeps near a serpent.
St Jerome often speaks of the saints in Heaven praying for us. Thus he
entreated Heliodorus to pray for him when he should be in glory, and told
St Paula, upon the death of her daughter Blesilla, “She now prays to the
Lord for you, and obtains for me the pardon of my sins”. But the general tone of
his reply to Vigilantius is even more vehement than that to Jovinian.
From 395 to 400
St Jerome was engaged in a war against Origenism, which unhappily involved
a breach of his twenty-five years friendship with Rufinus. Years before he
had written to him the doubtful statement that “friendship which can perish
has never been a true one”, as Shakespeare would write twelve hundred years later:
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove
And
now his affection for Rufinus was to succumb to his zeal for truth. Few writers
made more use of Origen’s works and no one seemed a greater admirer of his
erudition than St Jerome; but finding in the East that some had been seduced
into grievous errors by the authority of his name and some of his writings
he joined St Epiphanius in warmly opposing the spreading evil.
Rufinus,
who then lived in a monastery at Jerusalem, had translated many of Origen’s
works into Latin and was an enthusiastic upholder of his authority: though
it does not appear that he had any intention of upholding those heresies which
are undoubtedly contained, at least materially, in Origen’s writings.
St Augustine was not the least of the good men who were distressed by the
resulting quarrel, which, however, he the more easily understood because he
himself became involved in a long controversy with St Jerome arising out of
the exegesis of the second chapter of St Paul’s epistle to the Galatians.
By his first letters he had unintentionally provoked Jerome, and had to use
considerable charitable tact to soothe his easily wounded susceptibilities.
St Jerome wrote in 416 “I never spared heretics and have always done my utmost
that the enemies of the Church should be also my enemies”; but it seems that
sometimes he unwarrantably assumed that those who differed from himself were
necessarily the Church’s enemies. He was no admirer of moderation whether
in virtue or against evil. He was swift to anger, but also swift to remorse,
even more severe on his own shortcomings than on those of others. There is
a story told that Pope Sixtus V, looking at a picture of the saint which represented
him in the act of striking his breast with a stone, said: “You do well to
carry that stone, for without it the Church would never have canonized you.”
But his denunciations and controversies, necessary as most of them were,
are the less important part of his activities. Nothing has rendered
the name of St Jerome so famous as his critical labors on the Holy Scriptures.
For this the Church acknowledges him to have been raised by God through a
special providence, and she styles him the greatest of all her doctors in
expounding the divine word. Pope Clement VIII did not scruple to call him
a man divinely assisted in translating the Bible. He was furnished with the
greatest helps for such an undertaking, living many years upon the spot where
the remains of ancient places, names, customs which were still recent, and
other circumstances set before his eyes a clearer representation of many things
recorded in holy writ than it is possible to have at a greater distance of
place and time. Greek and Aramaic were then living languages, and Hebrew,
though it had ceased to be such from the time of the captivity, was not less
understood and spoken among the doctors of the law.
It was thought that he could not be further instructed in
the knowledge of Hebrew, but this was not his own judgment of the matter
and he applied again to a famous Jewish master, called Bar Ananias, who came
to teach him in the night-time, lest the Jews should know it.
Above other conditions it is necessary that an interpreter of the Bible
be a man of prayer and sincere piety. This alone can obtain light and help
from Heaven, give to the mind a turn and temper which are necessary for being
admitted into the sanctuary of the divine wisdom, and furnish the key. Jerome
was prepared by a great purity of heart and a life spent in penance and contemplation
before he was called by God to this undertaking. We have seen that while in
Rome under Pope St Damasus he had revised the gospels and the psalms in the
Old Latin version, followed by the rest of the New Testament. His new translation
from the Hebrew of most of the books of the Old Testament was the work of
his years of retreat at Bethlehem, which he undertook at the earnest entreaties
of many devout and illustrious friends, and in view of the preference of
the original to any version however venerable. He did not translate the books
in order, but began by the books of Kings, and took the rest in hand at different
times.
The only parts of the Latin Bible called the Vulgate which
were not either translated or worked over by St Jerome are the books of Wisdom,
Ecclesiasticus, Baruch and the two books of Macchabees. The psalms he revised
again, with the aid of Origen’s Hexapla and the Hebrew text,
and this is the version included in the Vulgate and used in the Divine Office.*
{*Since 1945 there is an alternative Latin version for this purpose, made
principally from the Hebrew Masoretic text.}
The
first revision, called the Roman Psalter, is still used for the invitatory
psalm at Matins and throughout the Missal, and for the Divine Office in
St Peter’s at Rome, St Mark’s at Venice, and in the Milanese rite. St Jerome’s
Vulgate was declared by the Council of Trent to be the authentic or authoritative
Latin biblical text of the Catholic Church, without thereby implying any
preference of this version above the original text or above versions in other
languages.
In 1907 Pope Pius X entrusted to the monks of
St Benedict the duty of restoring so far as possible St Jerome’s text of
the Vulgate, which during fifteen centuries of use has become considerably
modified and corrupted. The version of the Bible ordinarily used by English-speaking
Catholics is the translation of the Vulgate made at Rheims and Douay towards
the end of the sixteenth century, as revised by Bishop Challoner in the eighteenth;
and the English version officially made by Monsignor Ronald Knox was also
from the Vulgate.
In the year 404 a great blow fell on St Jerome in the death of St Paula
and a few years later in the sacking of Rome by Alaric many refugees fled
into the East, and he wrote of them:
“Who would have believed that the daughters of
that mighty city would one day be wandering as servants and slaves on the
shores of Egypt and Africa? That Bethlehem would daily receive noble Romans,
distinguished ladies brought up in wealth and now reduced to beggary?
I cannot help them all, but I grieve and weep with them, and, completely given
up to the duties which charity imposes on me, I have put aside my commentary
on Ezekiel and almost all study. For to-day we must translate the words of
the Scriptures into deeds, and instead of speaking saintly words we must act
them.”
Again towards the end of his life he was obliged to interrupt his studies
by an incursion of barbarians, and some time after by the violence and persecution
of the Pelagians who sent a troop of ruffians to Bethlehem to assault the
monks and nuns who lived there under the direction of St Jerome, who had opposed
them. Some were beaten, and a deacon was killed, and they set fire to the
monasteries.
In the following year St Eustochium died and Jerome himself soon followed
her: worn out with penance and work, his sight and voice failing, his body
like a shadow, he died peacefully on September 30, 420. He was buried under
the church of the Nativity close to Paula and Eustochium, but his body was
removed long after and now lies somewhere in St Mary Major’s at Rome.
He is
often represented in art habited as a cardinal, because of the services he
discharged for Pope St Damasus, and also with a lion from whose paw he was
said to have drawn a thorn. This story has been transferred to him from the
legend of St Gerasimus, but a lion is a far from inapt emblem of this fearless
and fierce defender of the faith.
During recent years much advance has been made in the study of the
life of St Jerome. Of special value is the volume Miscellanea
Geronimiana which was published at Rome in 1920 to do honour to the fifteenth
centenary of his death. In this a number of eminent scholars, including Duchesne,
Batiffol, Lanzoni, Zeiller and Bulic, contribute studies on moot points
of particular interest in connection with the saint. Then in 1922 appeared
the best modern life, that of F. Cavallera, Saint Jérome, sa vie et son oeuvre (1922,
a vols.), though the criticisms of Father Peeters in Analacta
Bollandiana, vol. xlii, pp. 180—184, claim careful attention. At an
earlier date we have the discovery by G. Morin of Jerome’s Commentarioli
and Tractatus on the psalms, with other finds
(see his Etudes, textes, decouvertes, pp. 17—25). Further,
a very full article on St Jerome by H. Leclercq figures in DAC., vol. vii,
cc. 2235— 2304; and another by J. Forget in DTC., vol. viii
(1924), cc. 894—983. In the eighteenth century we have the painstaking labors
of Vallarsi, and of the Bollandists (September, vol. viii). The early accounts
of St Jerome, with the exception perhaps of the chronicle of Marcellinus
(edited by Mommsen in MGH, Auctores antiquissimi, vol. ii,
pp. 47 seq.),do not offer much of value. Jerome’s correspondence
and works must always remain the principal source for
a study of his life. See also P. Monceaux, St Jerome the Early
Years: (1935); J. Duff, Letters of
St Jerome (1942); A. Penna, S. Girolamo (1949) P.
Antin, Essai sur S. Jérôme (1951); and
A Monument to St Jerome (1952), essays ed. by F. X.
Murphy.
St. Jerome, who was born Eusebius
Hieronymous Sophronius, was the most learned of the Fathers of the Western
Church. He was at a small town at the head of the Adriatic, near the episcopal
city of Aquileia. His father, a Christian, took care that his son was well
instructed at home, then sent him to Rome, where the young man's teachers
were the famous pagan grammarian Donatus and Victorinus, a Christian rhetorician.
Jerome's native tongue was the Illyrian dialect, but at Rome
he became fluent in Latin and Greek, and read the literatures of those languages
with great pleasure.
His aptitude for oratory was such that he may have considered
law as a career. He acquired many worldly ideas, made little effort to check
his pleasure-loving instincts, and lost much of the piety that had been instilled
in him at home. Yet in spite of the pagan and hedonistic influences around
him, Jerome was baptized by Pope
Liberius in 360. He tells us that "it was my custom on Sundays to visit,
with friends of my own age and tastes, the tombs of the martyrs and Apostles,
going down into those subterranean galleries whose walls on both sides preserve
the relics of the dead." Here he enjoyed deciphering the inscriptions.
After three years at Rome, Jerome's
intellectual curiosity led him to explore other parts of the world. He visited
his home and then, accompanied by his boyhood friend Bonosus, went to Aquileia,
where he made friends among the monks of the monastery there, notably Rufinus.
Then, still accompanied by Bonosus, he traveled to Treves, in Gaul. He now
renounced all secular pursuits to dedicate himself wholeheartedly to God.
Eager to build up a religious library, the young scholar copied
out St. Hilary's books on and his Commentaries on the Psalms, and got together
other literary and religious treasures. He returned to Stridonius, and later
settled in Aquileia. The bishop had cleared the church there of the plague
of Arianism and had drawn to it many eminent men. Among those with whom
Jerome formed friendships were Chromatius (later canonized), to whom Jerome
dedicated several of his works, Heliodorus (also to become a saint), and
his nephew Nepotian. The famous theologian Rufinus, at first his close
friend, afterward became his bitter opponent. By nature an irascible
man with a sharp tongue, Jerome made enemies as well as friends. He spent
some years in scholarly studies in Aquileia, then, in search of more perfect
solitude, he turned towards the East. With his friends, Innocent, Heliodorus,
and Hylas, a freed slave, he started overland for Syria. On the way they visited
Athens, Bithynia, Galatia, Pontus, Cappadocia, and Cilicia.
The party arrived at Antioch
about the year 373. There Jerome at first attended the lectures of the famous
Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea, who had not yet put forward his heresy1 With
his companions he left the city for the desert of Chalcis, about fifty miles
southeast of Antioch. Innocent and Hylas soon died there, and Heliodorus left
to return to the West, but Jerome stayed for four years, which were passed
in study and in the practice of austerity. He had many attacks of illness
but suffered still more from temptation. “In
the remotest part of a wild and stony desert,”
he wrote years afterwards to his friend Eustochium, “burnt
up with the heat of the sun, so scorching that it frightens even the monks
who live there, I seemed to myself to be in the midst of the delights and
crowds of Rome.... In this exile and prison to which through fear of Hell
I had voluntarily condemned myself, with no other company but scorpions and
wild beasts, I many times imagined myself watching the dancing of Roman maidens
as if I had been in the midst of them. My face was pallid with fasting, yet
my will felt the assaults of desire. In my cold body and my parched flesh,
which seemed dead before its death, passion was still able to live. Alone
with the enemy, I threw myself in spirit at the feet of Jesus, watering them
with my tears, and tamed my flesh by fasting whole weeks. I am not ashamed
to disclose my temptations, though I grieve that I am not now what I then
was.”
Jerome added to these trials the study of Hebrew,
a discipline which he hoped would help him in winning a victory over himself.
“When my soul was on fire with wicked thoughts,” he wrote in 411, “as a last resort, I became a pupil to a monk who
had been a Jew, in order to learn the Hebrew alphabet.”
“From the judicious precepts of Quintilian, the
rich and fluent eloquence of Cicero, the graver style of Fronto, and the
smoothness of Pliny, I turned to this language of hissing and broken-winded
words. What labor it cost me, what difficulties I went through, how often
I despaired and abandoned it and began again to learn, both I, who felt the
burden, and they who lived with me, can bear witness. I thank our Lord that
I now gather such sweet fruit from the bitter sowing of those studies.”
He continued to read
the pagan classics for pleasure until a vivid dream turned him from them,
at least for a time. In a letter he describes how, during an illness, he
dreamed he was standing before the tribunal of Christ. “Thou
a Christian?”
said the judge skeptically. “Thou
art a Ciceronian. Where thy treasure is, there thy heart is also.”
The church at Antioch was greatly disturbed
at this time by party and doctrinal disputes. The anchorites in the desert
took sides, and called on Jerome, the most learned of them, to give his opinions
on the subjects at issue. He wrote for guidance to Pope Damasus at Rome.
Failing to receive an answer, he wrote again. “On
one side, the Arian fury rages, supported by the secular power; on the other
side, the Church (at Antioch) is being divided into three parts, and each
would draw me to itself.”
No reply from Damasus is extant; but we know that Jerome acknowledged Paulinus,
leader of one party, as bishop of Antioch, and that when he left the desert
of Chalcis, he received from Paulinus' hands his ordination as priest. Jerome
consented to ordination only on condition that he should not be obliged to
serve in any church, knowing that his true vocation was to be a monk and recluse.
About 380 Jerome went to Constantinople to study the Scriptures
under the Greek, Gregory of Nazianzus, then bishop of that city. Two years
later he went back to Rome with Paulinus of Antioch to attend a council
which Pope Damasus was holding to deal with the Antioch schism. Appointed
secretary of the council, Jerome acquitted himself so well that, when it
was over, Damasus kept him there as his own secretary. At the Pope's request
he prepared a revised text, based on the Greek, of the Latin New Testament,
the current version of which had been disfigured by “wrong
copying, clumsy correction, and careless interpolations.”
He also revised the Latin psalter. That the prestige of Rome and its power
to arbitrate between disputants, East as well as West, was recognized as never
before at this time, was due in some measure at least to Jerome's diligence
and ability. Along with his official duties he was fostering a new movement
of Christian asceticism among a group of noble Roman ladies. Several of them
were to be canonized, including Albina and her daughters Marcella and Asella,
Melania the Elder, who was the first of them to go to the Holy Land, and
Paula, with her daughters, Blesilla and Eustochium. The tie between Jerome
and the three last-mentioned women was especially close, and to them he addressed
many of his famous letters.
When Pope Damasus died in 384,
he was succeeded by Siricius, who was less friendly to Jerome. While serving
Damasus, Jerome had impressed all by his personal holiness, learning, and
integrity. But he had also managed to get himself widely disliked by pagans
and evil-doers whom he had condemned, and also by people of taste and tolerance,
many of them Christians, who were offended by his biting sarcasm and a certain
ruthlessness in attack. An example of his style is the harsh diatribe against
the artifices of worldly women, who “paint
their cheeks with rouge and their eyelids with antimony, whose plastered
faces, too white for human beings, look like idols; and if in a moment of
forgetfulness they shed a tear it makes a furrow where it rolls down the painted
cheek; women to whom years do not bring the gravity of age, who load their
heads with other people's hair, enamel a lost youth upon the wrinkles of
age, and affect a maidenly timidity in the midst of a troop of grand children.”
In a letter to Eustochium he writes with scorn of certain members of the
Roman clergy. “All
their anxiety is about their clothes.... You would take them for bridegrooms
rather than for clerics; all they think about is knowing the names and houses
and doings of rich ladies.”
Although Jerome's indignation was usually justified, his manner
of expressing it-both verbally and in letters-aroused resentment. His own
reputation was attacked; his bluntness, his walk, and even his smile were
criticized. And neither the virtue of the ladies under his direction nor his
own scrupulous behavior towards them was any protection from scandalous gossip.
Affronted at the calumnies that were circulated, Jerome decided to return
to the East. Taking with him his brother Paulinian and some others, he embarked
in August, 385. At Cyprus, on the way, he was received with joy by Bishop
Epiphanius, and at Antioch also he conferred with leading churchmen. It was
here, probably, that he was joined by the widow Paula and some other ladies
who had left Rome with the aim of settling in the Holy Land.
With what remained of Jerome's own patrimony and with financial
help from Paula, a monastery for men was built near the basilica of the Nativity
at Bethlehem, and also houses for three communities of women. Paula became
head of one of these, and after her death was succeeded by her daughter Eustochium.
Jerome himself lived and worked in a large cave near the Saviour's birthplace.
He opened a free school there and also a hospice for pilgrims, “so
that,”
as Paula said, “should
Mary and Joseph visit Bethlehem again, they would have a place to stay.”
Now at last Jerome began to enjoy some years of peaceful activity. He gives
us a wonderful description of this fruitful, harmonious, Palestinian life,
and its attraction for all manner of men.
“Illustrious
Gauls congregate here, and no sooner has the Briton, so remote from our
world, arrived at religion than he leaves his early-setting sun to seek a
land which he knows only by reputation and from the Scriptures. Then the
Armenians, the Persians, the peoples of India and Ethiopia, of Egypt, and
of Pontus, Cappadocia, Syria, and Mesopotamia!... They come in throngs and
set us examples of every virtue. The languages differ but the religion is
the same; as many different choirs chant the psalms as there are nations....
Here bread and herbs, planted with our own hands, and milk, all country fare,
furnish us plain and healthy food. In summer the trees give us shade. In
autumn the air is cool and the falling leaves restful. In spring our psalmody
is sweeter for the singing of the birds. We have plenty of wood when winter
snow and cold are upon us. Let Rome keep its crowds, let its arenas run with
blood, its circuses go mad, its theaters wallow in sensuality...”
From 395 to 400 Jerome was engaged
in a war against Origenism, which unhappily created a breach in his long friendship
with Rufinus. Finding that some Eastern monks had been led into error by
the authority of Rufinus' name and learning, Jerome attacked him. Rufinus,
then living in a monastery at Jerusalem, had translated many of Origen's
works into Latin and was an enthusiastic upholder of his scholarship, though
it does not appear that he meant to defend the heresies in Origen's writings.
Augustine, bishop of Hippo, was one of the churchmen greatly distressed by
the quarrel between Jerome and Rufinus, and became unwillingly involved in
a controversy with Jerome.
Jerome's passionate controversies were the least important part
of his activities. What has made his name so famous was his critical labor
on the text of the Scriptures. The Church regards him as the greatest of
all the doctors in clarifying the Divine Word. He had the best available
aids for such an undertaking, living where the remains of Biblical places,
names, and customs all combined to give him a more vivid view than he could
have had at a greater distance. To continue his study of Hebrew he hired
a famous Jewish scholar, Bar Ananias, who came to teach him by night, lest
other Jews should learn of it. As a man of prayer and purity of heart whose
life had been mainly spent in study, penance, and contemplation, Jerome was
prepared to be a sensitive interpreter of spiritual things.
We have seen that already while at Rome he had made a revision
of the current Latin New Testament, and of the Psalms. Now he undertook to
translate most of the books of the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew.
The friends and scholars who urged him to this task realized the superiority
of a version made directly from the original to any second-hand version, however
venerable. It was needed too for argument with the Jews, who recognized no
other text as authentic but their own. He began with the Books of Kings, and
went on with the rest at different times. When he found that the Book of
Tobias and part of Daniel had been composed in Chaldaic, he set himself to
learn that difficult language also. More than once he was tempted to give
up the whole wearisome task, but a certain scholarly tenacity of purpose kept
him at it. The only parts of the Latin Bible, now known as the Vulgate, which
were not either translated or worked over by him are the Books of Wisdom,
Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and the two Books of the Maccabees.3 He revised the
Psalms once again, with the aid of Origen's ,4 and the Hebrew text. This last
is the version included now in the Vulgate and used generally in the Divine
Office; his first revision, known as the Roman Psalter, is still used for
the opening psalm at Matins and throughout the Missal, and for the Divine
Office in the cathedrals of St. Peter at Rome and St. Mark at Venice, and
in the Milanese rite.
In the sixteenth century the
great Council of Trent pronounced Jerome's Vulgate the authentic and authoritative
Latin text of the Catholic Church, without, however, thereby implying a preference
for it above the original text or above versions in other languages. In 1907
Pope Pius X entrusted to the Benedictine Order the office of restoring as
far as possible the correct text of St. Jerome's Vulgate, which during fifteen
centuries of use had naturally become altered in many places. The Bible now
ordinarily used by English-speaking Catholics is a translation of the Vulgate,
made at Rheims and Douay towards the end of the sixteenth century, and revised
by Bishop Challoner in the eighteenth. The Confraternity Edition of the New
Testament appearing in 1950 represents a complete revision.
A heavy blow came to Jerome in 404 when his staunch friend,
the saintly Paula, died. Six years later he was stunned by news of the sacking
of Rome by Alaric the Goth. Of the refugees who fled from Rome to the East
at this time he wrote: "Who would have believed that the daughters of that
mighty city would one day be wandering as servants and slaves on the shores
of Egypt and Africa, or that Bethlehem would daily receive noble Romans, distinguished
ladies, brought up in wealth and now reduced to beggary? I cannot help them
all, but I grieve and weep with them, and am completely absorbed in the duties
which charity imposes on me. I have put aside my commentary on Ezekiel and
almost all study. For today we must translate the precepts of the Scriptures
into deeds; instead of speaking saintly words, we must act them." A few years
later his work was again interrupted by raids of barbarians pushing north
through Egypt into Palestine, and later still by a violent onset of Pelagian
heretics, who, relying on the protection of Bishop John of Jerusalem, sent
a troop of ruffians to Bethlehem to disperse the monks and nuns living there
under the direction of Jerome, who had been opposing Pelagianism5 with his
customary truculence. Some of the monks were beaten, a deacon was killed,
and monasteries were set on fire. Jerome had to go into hiding for a time.
The following year Paula's daughter Eustochium died. The aged
Jerome soon fell ill, and after lingering for two years succumbed. Worn with
penance and excessive labor, his sight and voice almost gone, his body like
a shadow, he died peacefully on September 30, 420, and was buried under the
church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. In the thirteenth century his body was
translated and now lies somewhere in the Sistine Chapel of the basilica of
Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome. The Church owes much to St. Jerome. While his
great work was the Vulgate, his achievements in other fields are valuable;
to him we owe the distinction between canonical and apocryphal writings; he
was a pioneer in the field of Biblical archeology, his commentaries are important;
his letters, published in three volumes, are one of our best sources of knowledge
of the times.
St. Jerome has been a popular subject with artists, who have
pictured him in the desert, as a scholar in his study, and sometimes in
the robes of a cardinal, because of his services for Pope Damasus; often
too he is shown with a lion, from whose paw, according to legend, he once
drew a thorn. Actually this story was transferred to him from the tradition
of St. Gerasimus, but a lion is not an inappropriate symbol for so fearless
a champion of the faith.
St. Jerome and the Lion
In Vita Divi Hieronymi (Migne. P.L., XXII, c. 209ff.) as translated
by Helen Waddell in Beasts and Saints (NY: Henry Holt and Co., 1934), you
will find the reason St. Jerome is generally pictured with a lion.
One evening at dusk St. Jerome sat with his fellow monk in
his monastery in Jerusalem listening to the lesson of the day, when a mighty
lion came in limping on three paws, holding the fourth caught up. Imagine
the chaos that followed as the monks tripped over one another trying to get
away. But Jerome went out to meet him as one greets an incoming guest.
Of course, the lion couldn't speak, since it's not in their
nature, but offered the good father his wounded paw. Jerome examined it
and called his brethren to bathe it. When it was clean Jerome noticed that
the paw had been pierced by thorns. After he applied a salve, the wound quickly
healed.
The gentle ministrations had tamed the lion, who now went in
and out of the cloister as peaceably as any domestic animal. Of this Jerome
said, "Bring your minds to bear upon this, my brethren: what, I ask you,
can we find for this lion to do in the way of useful and suitable work, that
will not be burdensome to him, and that he can efficiently accomplish? For
I believe of a surety that it was not so much for the healing of his paw
that God sent him hither, since He could have cured him without us, as to
show us that He is anxious to provide marvellous well for our necessity."
The brothers thought that the lion should be tasked with accompanying
and protecting the donkey that carried the firewood for the monastery. And
so that was the lion's charge. And thus it was for a long time; the lion would
guard the donkey as he went to and fro. One day, however, the lion grew tired
and fell asleep as the donkey grazed and some Egyptian oil merchants espied
the untended donkey and led him away. The lion eventually
awoke and went in search of the donkey. With increasing anxiety he hunted
for the donkey all day. At even fall, hopeless, he returned and stood at the
monastery gate. Conscious of guilt, he no longer walked in pride as he did
usually with the donkey. When Jerome and the monks saw him, they concluded
his guilt grew from having allowed his savage nature to overtake his gentleness;
that he had killed the donkey. So, they refused to feed him and sent him away
to finish eating his kill. And yet there was some doubt as
to whether he had committed the crime, so the monks went in search of the
donkey's carcass and couldn't find it anywhere, nor any sign of violence.
The monks reported to Jerome, who said, "I entreat you, brethren, that although
you have suffered the loss of the ass, do not nevertheless nag at him or make
him wretched. Treat him as before, and offer him his food: and let him take
the donkey's place, and make a light harness for him so that he can drag
home the branches that have fallen in the wood." And so it happened.
The lion regularly did his appointed
task. Yet the lion still sought some understanding of the fate of his former
companion. One day he climbed a hill and looked down upon the highway, where
he saw men coming with laden camels, and in front of them walked a donkey.
He stepped out to meet them. He saw it was his friend and began to roar,
charging at the merchants without doing them harm. Frightened, they ran away
as fast as they could, leaving the donkey and their packed camels behind
them.
The lion led the animals back
to the monastery. When the monks saw this odd sight--a donkey leading a parade
with the lion in the vanguard and the camels in between--they ran to get Jerome.
The saint had the gates opened then said, "Take their loads off these our
guests, the camels, I mean, and the donkey, and bathe their feet and give
them fodder, and wait to see what God is minded to show His servants."
When he instructions were carried out, the lion began to roam
once again through the cloister as he used to do, flattening myself against
the feet of each group of brothers and wagging his tail, as though to ask
forgiveness for the crime that he had never committed. The brothers, full
of remorse for their calumny would say to one another, "Behold our trusty
shepherd whom so short a while ago we were upbraiding for a greedy ruffian,
and God has deigned to send him to us with such a resounding miracle, to clear
his character!"
Meanwhile, Jerome, aware of things to come, said, "Be prepared,
my brethren, in all things that are requisite for refreshment: so that those
who are about to be our guests may be received, as is fitting, without embarassment."
So the brothers prepared for the arrival of other guests, just
as the merchants arrived a the gate. They were welcomed; however, they entered
blushing, and protrated themselves at Jerome's feet, entreating forgiveness
for their fault. 'Gently raising them up, he admonished them to enjoy their
own with thanksgiving, but not to encroach on others' goods: and in short
to live cautiously, as ever in the presence of God.' Then he offered them
refreshment before they left with their camels.
The merchants offered the monks half the oil carried by their
camels to fill the lamps in the church and for the needs of the monks, "because
we know and are sure that it was rather to be of service to you than for
our own profit that we went down into Egypt to bargain there."
Jerome responded, "This that you ask is indeed not right, for
it would seem a great hardship that we who ought to have compassionon others
and relieve their necessities by our own giving, should bear so heavy on
you, taking your property away from you when we are not in need of it."
To which they answered, "Neither this food, nor any of our own
property do we touch, unless you first command that what we ask shall be done.
And so, as we have said, do you now accept half of the oil that the camels
have brought: and we pledge ourselves and our heirs to give to you and those
that come after you the measure of oil which is called a hin in each succeeding
year."
And so Jerome accepted. The merchants for their part accepted
the refreshments and a blessing, and returned rejoicing to the own people.
Waddell says that the manuscript
that records this story dates no earlier than the 10th or 11th century, and
may well result from a confusion between the irasible St. Jerome (Hieronymus)
and the more genial St. Gerasimus, who lived a little further up the Jordan
River. St. Gerasimus's lion and donkey are less sophisticated than those in
this later story. Though St. Jerome is generally remembered as a curmudgeon,
he did have those who loved him and saw a gentler side.
September 30, 2006 St. Jerome (345-420)
Most of the saints are remembered for some outstanding virtue
or devotion which they practiced, but Jerome is remembered too frequently
for his bad temper! It is true that he had a very bad temper and could use
a vitriolic pen, but his love for God and his Son Jesus Christ was extraordinarily
intense; anyone who taught error was an enemy of God and truth, and St. Jerome
went after him or her with his mighty and sometimes sarcastic pen.
He was above all a Scripture scholar, translating most of the
Old Testament from the Hebrew. He also wrote commentaries which are a great
source of scriptural inspiration for us today. He was an avid student, a
thorough scholar, a prodigious letter-writer and a consultant to monk, bishop
and pope. St. Augustine said of him, "What Jerome is ignorant of, no mortal
has ever known."
St. Jerome is particularly important for having made a translation
of the Bible which came to be called the Vulgate. It is not the most critical
edition of the Bible, but its acceptance by the Church was fortunate. As a
modern scholar says, "No man before Jerome or among his contemporaries and
very few men for many centuries afterwards were so well qualified to do the
work." The Council of Trent called for a new and corrected edition of the
Vulgate, and declared it the authentic text to be used in the Church.
In order to be able to do such work, Jerome prepared himself
well. He was a master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Chaldaic. He began his
studies at his birthplace, Stridon in Dalmatia (in the former Yugoslavia).
After his preliminary education he went to Rome, the center of learning at
that time, and thence to Trier, Germany, where the scholar was very much
in evidence. He spent several years in each place, trying always to find
the very best teachers.
After these preparatory studies he traveled extensively in Palestine,
marking each spot of Christ's life with an outpouring of devotion. Mystic
that he was, he spent five years in the desert of Chalcis so that he might
give himself up to prayer, penance and study. Finally he settled in Bethlehem,
where he lived in the cave believed to have been the birthplace of Christ.
On September 30 in the year 420, Jerome died in Bethlehem. The remains of
his body now lie buried in the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome.
Comment: Jerome was a strong, outspoken
man. He had the virtues and the unpleasant fruits of being a fearless critic
and all the usual moral problems of a man. He was, as someone has said, no
admirer of moderation whether in virtue or against evil. He was swift to
anger, but also swift to feel remorse, even more severe on his own shortcomings
than on those of others. A pope is said to have remarked, on seeing a picture
of Jerome striking his breast with a stone, "You do well to carry that stone,
for without it the Church would never have canonized you" (Butler's Lives
of the Saints).
Quote: "In the remotest
part of a wild and stony desert, burnt up with the heat of the scorching sun
so that it frightens even the monks that inhabit it, I seemed to myself to
be in the midst of the delights and crowds of Rome. In this exile and prison
to which for the fear of hell I had voluntarily condemned myself, I many
times imagined myself witnessing the dancing of the Roman maidens as if I
had been in the midst of them: In my cold body and in my parched-up flesh,
which seemed dead before its death, passion was able to live. Alone with
this enemy, I threw myself in spirit at the feet of Jesus, watering them
with my tears, and I tamed my flesh by fasting whole weeks. I am not ashamed
to disclose my temptations, but I grieve that I am not now what I then was"
("Letter to St. Eustochium").
|
Mary
the Mother of Jesus 
Saints of this Day September
30 Prídie Kaléndas Octóbris
420 ST JEROME,
DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH JEROME (EUSEBIUS HIERONYMUS SOPHRONIUS) Born at Stridon, Hungary
recusátis Ecclésiæ dignitátibus, vir memorábilis
éxstitit. Ipsíus autem festum sexto Idus Octóbris
celebrátur.
The Earth Yielded Its Fruit September 30 - Saint Jerome
(d. 420)
Quote: Pope
Paul VI’s 1969 
Benedict
XVI met with Aram I Catholicos of Cilicia,
the highest authority of the Orthodox Church.
The Pope remembered
the martyrs of the Armenian Church and the Armenian
genocide, without explicitly mentioning
it, and denounced the persecution of Christians in
modern times. Benedict
XVI
As we watch
the spectacle of the world seeming to self-destruct
before our eyes, we can’t help but be
saddened and even frightened by so much evil run
rampant. Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia, North
Korea—It is all a disaster of epic proportions
displayed in living color on our television screens.