Jerome

Who Was Jerome?

Jerome was the greatest biblical scholar of the early church and the translator of the Latin Vulgate — the translation of the Bible into Latin that remained the standard text of Western Christianity for over a millennium. Born Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus in Stridon, on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia, he was educated in Rome under the grammarian Donatus, baptized as a young man, and spent years in the Syrian desert as an ascetic before his extraordinary linguistic gifts and his combative personality drew him back into the life of the church.

His translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into Latin — commissioned by Pope Damasus in 382 and substantially completed over the following two decades — was an act of extraordinary scholarly labor and theological seriousness. Jerome insisted on translating from the original languages rather than from earlier Latin versions, a methodological choice that put him in conflict with many of his contemporaries, including Augustine, who worried about the disruption to existing church practice.

Jerome was also a prolific biblical commentator, a polemicist of formidable energy, and a correspondent whose letters constitute one of the most interesting windows into the intellectual and social life of the late Roman church. His relationships with the wealthy Roman women Paula and Eustochium, whom he guided in the ascetic life, were central to his later career and to the foundation of the monastic community he led in Bethlehem until his death.

In Their Own Words

Selected Bibliography

• The Latin Vulgate Bible — 382–405 — translation
• Commentary on Isaiah — Jerome's most extensive biblical commentary
• Commentary on Matthew — c. 398
• Letters — over 120 surviving, a major patristic literary achievement
• The Lives of Illustrious Men (De Viris Illustribus) — 392