Ecumenical Commemoration
Priest, Translator, & Doctor of the Church
September 30 · d. 420
also known as Jerome, Jerome of Bethlehem, Saint Jerome the Translator, Eusebius Hieronymus
Jerome was the most prolific writer of the late patristic period and the translator of the Latin Vulgate — the authoritative Bible translation that shaped Western Christendom for over 1,200 years. A brilliant biblical scholar and fierce polemicist, Jerome combined extraordinary erudition with remarkable range, producing commentaries, translations, letters, and theological treatises that remain essential reading in the Western tradition.
Traditionally, Jerome's harsh asceticism in the Syrian desert was understood as a form of martyrdom — self-denial as a witness to Christ. According to Jerome's own accounts, he was tormented by sexual temptation in the desert and sustained by visions and theological study. He famously dreamed of being brought before a judge and condemned as a 'Ciceronian' rather than a Christian — a vision that symbolized his struggle to reconcile classical culture with Christian faith.
Jerome's life was understood less as miracle-working holiness than as intellectual and ascetic struggle. His irascible personality was acknowledged even by admirers, and the tradition has not attempted to sanctify him by softening his rough edges. Instead, his sanctity was understood as rooted in his scholarly dedication, his ascetic discipline, his defense of orthodoxy, and his service to the Church through his translation and exegetical work.
Jerome was born around 347 in Stridon, on the border between Dalmatia and Pannonia (modern-day Croatia). His family was Christian and prosperous, and he received an excellent classical education in Rome, where he developed his lifelong passion for classical rhetoric and literature. As a young man, he was baptized and gradually moved toward a more committed Christian life, though not without continuing to admire pagan literature and philosophy.
In the mid-370s, Jerome embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and eventually settled in the Syrian desert as a hermit, where he lived an extremely ascetic life and studied biblical languages (Greek and Hebrew) from local Jewish scholars. After several years of harsh asceticism that he himself later acknowledged nearly destroyed his health, he was ordained a priest around 379 and began his ecclesiastical career.
Jerome moved to Constantinople around 381, where he attended the First Council of Constantinople and was influenced by Gregory of Nazianzus's theological work. In 382, he traveled to Rome, where he was appointed as secretary to Pope Damasus I. It was under Damasus's patronage that Jerome undertook his most important work: the revision and translation of the Bible into Latin.
The Old Latin translations (the Vetus Latina) were fragmentary and inconsistent. Damasus commissioned Jerome to produce a unified, reliable Latin translation based on the best available Greek and Hebrew texts. Jerome threw himself into this task with extraordinary dedication, producing what became known as the Latin Vulgate. His translation was not merely mechanical word-for-word conversion but reflected his profound biblical scholarship, his understanding of classical Latin idiom, and his theological judgment about how to convey biblical meaning in the Latin language.
While in Rome, Jerome also became a spiritual director to a circle of wealthy Christian widows, most notably the noblewoman Paula. When Pope Damasus died in 384 and a new pope took office less sympathetic to Jerome's personality and methods, Jerome departed Rome in disgust. In 385, he traveled to the Holy Land with Paula and her daughter Eustochium, eventually settling in Bethlehem at the Church of the Nativity.
In Bethlehem, Jerome established a monastery and scriptorium where he spent the remaining 35 years of his life in an extraordinarily productive combination of monastic community, scholarly work, and polemical writing. He continued revising the Vulgate, produced biblical commentaries on nearly every book of Scripture, wrote his De Viris Illustribus (a biographical dictionary of Christian writers), composed apologetic works against heresy, engaged in fierce controversies with theological opponents, and maintained an enormous correspondence with bishops, monks, and spiritual seekers throughout the Christian world.
Jerome's personality was famously difficult. His letters and polemical works are full of cutting remarks, bitter sarcasm, and personal attacks on his opponents. He was capable of extraordinary kindness to those he loved (his letters to Paula and Eustochium are tender and deeply spiritual) and equally capable of vicious personal invective toward those he opposed. Several of his theological opponents received withering treatment in his writings. He was also deeply misogynistic by modern standards, though he valued highly educated Christian women and defended the legitimacy of female monastic life.
Jerome died in Bethlehem on September 30, 420, shortly after the death of his closest companions. His legacy is vast: the Vulgate remained the authoritative Bible translation in Western Christendom until the Reformation; his biblical commentaries shaped medieval biblical interpretation; his De Viris Illustribus remains a primary source for patristic history; and his letters are studied as masterpieces of spiritual direction and ecclesiastical history.
Almighty God, you gave your servant Jerome special gifts of grace to understand and teach the truth revealed in Christ Jesus: Grant that by this teaching we may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.